


Two Vows

by Veei



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Here is my pile of headcanons wearing a trench coat, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Post-Canon, book canon, post a dream of spring, some sentences might feel weird that's because I think of what I write as an audiobook, this probably doesn't qualify as a slow burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-26 04:25:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 26,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12548796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Veei/pseuds/Veei
Summary: Post canon fic where, after the events of ADoS,  Sandor makes his way to Winterfell, to Sansa's shock.





	1. Part 1

Sansa had her marriage annulled because she wanted the choice she never had. Tyrion had never broken his word not to touch her and wretched Lord Baelish’s plan to marry her to Harry Hardyng had failed so close to success, she had been days away from the ceremony when Brienne freed her. But after two betrotheds and one husband, Sansa had still been a maid. She was free to make a draw of the maidenhead that her enemies had valued above her life.  
  
Proving she was untouched hadn't been easy though, Tyrion and her were wed over a decade. But the Lannister house being all but extinguished, the north craved new alliances. This had been how Bran and her had argued to the High Septon. After lavish gifts for the new Great Sept, the man of the faith had consented, but he still had ordered her to be examined.  
  
Once free, Sansa refused each offer, one after the other. She had told Bran that this time they would have to bound and drag her to the sept and force the words out of her.  
  
Sansa hoped Tyrion would understand. Those who had asked were told that Tyrion had always been kind to her and it was true. She had barely known him when they were wed, and she had scarcely learned more afterwards. It wasn't before they had started exchanging letters that she had truly learned to know her husband. After his wife’s refusal to return to him, his letters had told her much, quite soon, eager to finally speak, to know his child bride at last. What she had learned had intrigued and horrified her both. Her husband had long thought her guilty of Joffrey’s murder. He even had committed murders of his own, some letters told her. She destroyed those as soon as she read them, there still was kinship between them.  
Tyrion had a mind quick as a whip, but his darkness was everywhere, now that she knew of it.  
  
Sansa hoped, but of the letters he often sent her, none answered the one that bore the news. As they lived several kingdoms apart from each other, he was the Hand of the new Queen in the new siege of her power, she still hoped to read what he truly thought of her decision every time a crow carried a message in. After all, one bird could get lost, she knew as much.  
But the last remaining Lannister kept to himself what his feelings were. All Sansa knew was that he agreed to the annulment too. “It frees him too.”, she had told Arya, “I guess he is free to resent me, as well.”  
  
Even if Maester Tarly had let the word out by accident, when Sansa had hoped keeping it a secret, she relished being her own person again. To chose her name. Despite the use she had been born for, to be a Stark of Winterfell and nothing else.  
  
But then marriages offers had started pouring, ever pressing, alliances were discussed without her presence. And although her sweet Bran never agreed to trade his own sister, he did relay every proposition with hope of finding a match that would please her.  
  
And she did understood her siblings’ worry. Sansa was still young, though she was the eldest now, and of child bearing years. But as often as they discussed the matter, she couldn't find the words to say that she was not at peace with another match. Sansa didn’t want to marry a stranger again and be whisked away to some distant land. Not so soon after she had been freed. She knew how quickly sweet words could turn sour.  
  
She had stayed unswerving through greed filled courtships, reasonable peace consolidating alliances and indecent offers. Months stretched to years without any offer changing her mind. No, Sansa longed for companionship, but freedom was of greater value.  
  
She still dreamed of her marriage bed though, but not of her former husband. She dreamed of a shadow that touched her everywhere she asked it to, a presence more daring than her. A memory, no more alive than an echo.  
The visions were a crushing heat, plaguing her sleep, leaving a weight in her belly and a mist over her skin. There wasn't much she remembered of those dreams in the mornings, to her dismay, but when her maids tried hard to avoid her gaze, she knew she had cried out in the night.  
  
And Sansa had started to believe this was what her life would always be like, a life she was at peace with, at home with her pack. But one late autumn evening the wind dragged in a piece of her past, that she thought she had buried deep enough. One she hadn't seen since the battle for the bitter dawn.  
  
She was conversing with her sister Arya, discussing the repairs the castle never stopped needing. Now that the harvest was secured, Sansa was suggesting expanding the glass gardens, when the great door opening caught her eyes and the autumn chill crept lazily around the hall to catch her.  
  
Bran’s steward opened the door. The stranger that entered behind him tracked mud, and from what Sansa could see, his leg too. He stopped abruptly, startled at the large crowd gathered in the hall. The momentum threw off his cowl and loud gasps erupted around the room. A few men jumped to their feet, hands on the hilt of their swords. The captain of the guard drew his and waited for orders.  
The stranger’s reputation was a presence more imposing than the man itself. Tall, massive but alone. Hesitant, her brother’s steward climbed the dais’ ramp and whispered something to him. A few seats down from Bran, Sansa was frozen in place. She had stood up, somehow, though she could not remember how.  
  
The man looked around the hall, and upon spotting her, he fixed openly, furious, before his eyes fell back to the steward who had ushered him in, unscrewing his fist to rest his hand on the pommel of his sword, casting a long ominous stare that left the man even more uneasy.  
  
Sansa might not have recognised the filthy man but for the light of a torch casting ghastly shadows over old scars that cupped the left side of his face. Her stomach tied in a heavy knot.  
  
She couldn't believe her eyes.  
  
When she found she could walk, Sansa came to him, leaving Gendry’s newborn son into his arms, knocking her seat over, almost running in front of her entire household.  
He stood still, stubbornly looking away from her, the scars around his mouth twitching, his arms locked at his sides as she tried to will herself to grab his forearm. She wanted to make sure he was real with the tip of her fingers. A ghost would not be so lifelike.  
But he stayed silent, his anger subsiding, and left the hall with Bran who had rolled his chair down from the dais and signaled the captain of his guard to follow.  
  
Arya, who looked as horrified as Sansa was distressed, brought her back to her seat swiftly with a few soothing words. Her cheeks burned, every last single person was staring at her. Gendry kept asking them if it really was _him_. _Here_? _Now_?  
“I thought he died.”, he murmured to them, a deep frown creasing his brow.  
“So did I.”, replied Arya, still shocked.  
  
Sansa’s thoughts swirled around in her head. Of course she knew what had happened to him when Arya had told her, at Sansa’s many, many requests. But of the later events, she only had a recounting that kept on changing. She thought he was the fighter she had seen on the fields surrounding Winterfell. She was almost sure.  
  
She would never forget the night of the battle.  
She remembered how after helping bound the wounds of the first wave of injured, she had run for the battlements.  
She wanted to see the fighting for herself, to one day testify, if she were to survive.  
When the other one had been screams and green fire roaring, this battle had a silence to it. And it was a cruel white that stung her eyes. Flakes of snow swirled at every gust of wind, wiping mercilessly whatever stood in its way. The moon shone silver over the living and the dead alike.  
Gathering her furs around her, Sansa watched in mute terror the dead fall, rise fast and swift and pick up their weapons again. No sleep or rest. No semblant of death to trick the living. Men fell and then they rose and were men no longer. They lost limbs like trees lost leaves, and cared about as much.   
  
She noticed a tall fighter, leaning heavily on one leg, swerving against each foe that crept close. He drew her eyes. His size, she had supposed. But at the violent jerk he gave when the flaming sword swung not so near him, she knew him for who he was.  
  
Years later, Sansa still saw her hands, painted in blood to the elbow, clutching the stones before her, threatening to tumble over. The scars, she had to see the scars to know it was him. She saw another fighter approach him and give him another blade. One of the dragonglass blades brought by Samwell Tarly, she would later learn.  
  
Gendry had repaired a few suits of armor, they had even searched down in the crypt, but the remaining swords of the old Kings of Winter were beyond helping any living. The dragonglass blades cut the night air and filled it with ice, bringing hope with every slash.  
  
She cursed the wind that she had blessed but an hour ago when it blew away the screams, more beastly than human from where she stood. All it did now was drag his shouts away from the castle.  
Sansa had called his name, unashamed. But as her own men all around her shot flaming arrows without end, she was struck speechless, terrified her voice would break the spell that kept him alive and die as her brothers had.  
  
She looked on despite the bite of cold, as the man kept on calling on the dead when they overwhelmed the young living soldiers. Coaxing the white abominations to creep closer and taste his sword. To finish him. He all but gestured for death itself to come and pluck him. He disappeared behind a cluster of houses that had survived the torching and Sansa’s heart sank.  
  
The Others’ disorganisation was their weakness, but it mattered not. The living held, as best they could, but when they fell, the soldiers rose again, but on a different side of the battle.  
  
It seemed to Sansa the battle was already lost, there was no hope when each of their deaths filled the enemies’ ranks. But as dread crept around her heart, she saw a terrifying shadow swept in from the south. The crows had succeeded. The shape as big as a small Keep rumbled a low warning to every last onlooker to look up and heed. Shimmers of green slithered along the scales as it doubled down to the battleground.  
Finally it seemed the tide would reverse. At what horrifying cost, Sansa couldn’t, wouldn’t know.  
  
A gust of fire shoot out of the dragon’s mouth, spitting between rows of teeth Sansa knew to be sharp as knives. It set the sky afire. Was it day or night? Was there even still a day? They had lost count of the hours weeks ago.  
  
Sansa’s eyes followed the living soldiers, some fleeing, some petrified with fear as her own archers were, frozen mid-draw, arrows pointing down. Amidst the commotion she had lost sight of him, whoever he truly was.  
  
It took her ages to tear herself from the battlement, ordering her archers to take shelter from the fire of the dragon. The tide of battle was out of their hands now. She had wanted to go after him, as mad as it was. But as she crossed the great hall, she had to chose between the fresh wave of wounded soldiers over a ghost. And she chose to help.  
She asked the old to cut more bandages out of the bed linens and clothes the Boltons had left behind. She told the children to press their little hands to the many wounds of the soldiers waiting to be dressed, cursing herself. They were too young to see this.  
She ordered young servants to hack the last tables and chairs to keep the fires burning. The cold was growing only stronger. The meager roof and doors rebuilt in haste by Roose’s men couldn't keep this unnatural cold at bay.  
When she could find even the smallest of uses to each living that had not fled or died, she sat with Maester Tarly and stitched wounds closed. Countless wounds. It had been her most delicate embroidery yet. It seemed to her the moans of pain would melt into one agonizing shriek and never end.  
  
For the burns, she could do nothing but remove what had twisted inside the flesh and cut what couldn't be saved. The smell was agony. She remembered Old Nan and her stories of Harren and his sons burned and melted inside his own castle by dragon’s breath. If the Others were real, Sansa did not want to know what else was true of the old tales. What old terrors were loose in the world? Why couldn't the ice dragon be the one story to be true?  
  
Suddenly they saw skeletal hands through frost on the windows. The creatures were scaling the walls. But as soon as they understood that, a wave of fire melted glass and monsters alike.  
  
The moans brought her attention back to her task, she had no time to be afraid. She ordered the shutters to be closed. Her place was there. The cold pierced every last one of them as if the hot sources that the castle rested upon had never been there. The name of the castle itself taunted her, “Fell! Fell!”, her ears wouldn't stop hearing as her fingers stitched and stitched again, casting glances to the stones that she hoped would held beyond the centuries they had already endured. She ignored the door that shook so violently the wind crept in in long mournful moans. Outside the roars shred the thick silence that terrified her even more.  
  
Maester Tarly had been as brave as Jon. He had crossed the vast snowed in lands to warn them, and without him they would have never been ready for the Others. But tonight they stood a chance. She thought in tears how Jon would have been proud. But she pushed the thought away, she couldn't think about her brother just yet.  
  
She stitched until her own blood mingled with her men’s. Until slowly the wind dwindled to a whisper and she realized, outside, there were no more roars, no more shouts, no more metal shrieks.  
  
When she was done and the guard declared it safe, she finally ran out the door, across the bailey, the urgency biting back through her. She distantly saw the door, great chunks of wood hanging to the iron that barely held them together. She passed Brienne, frozen blood caking her yellow hair, who limped back into the castle, looking like every step was going to be her last.  
The ground of the yard was covered in bodies, there were so many Sansa had to walk over some of them to pass the great gate, smashed to splinters as it was.    
Her lungs burning, she searched through the field of hacked bloody corpses, cold ash swerving around in the crisp dead air. Those who weren't dead begged to be saved or put to death, sometimes both. She gave comfort to the men drowning in their own blood that maesters were on their way. She freed her ankles from their grasp, most would be dead by the next dawn.  
  
In the distance, the dragon tried to take flight again. But its wings were shred of leathery flesh that shown the dawn’s new light through large tears. Its rider was a broken doll. The beast agonized, its insides strewn besides it.  
  
Sansa searched everywhere on the black scorched ground but couldn't find the man she was looking for. Most of those burnt were black beyond recognition.  
“Dragon _._ ”, she whispered in disbelief, looking up at the ashen empty skies. How could one beast slay so many?  
Stumbling over dead flesh that had been men and women only hours ago, people that had fought and fell to save all of them, Sansa finally took in the horror of war as it laid on the fields of her childhood.  
As her nerves caught with her at long last, the trembling became too strong to fight. She gave instructions to burn as many bodies as possible before evenfall, even if they were never supposed to rise again now, and that if a seven feet tall fallen was recovered, dead or alive, to fetch her at once.  
  
They couldn't burn him, not him, it would be too cruel.  
  
She stopped at the great door on her way in. _Fire breathing dragon_. “Fire.”, she murmured.   
She threw up right here and there, too exhausted to cry.      
  
Sansa wandered back to the castle, not realizing yet the battle was won. It didn't feel like victory. She went back to the wounded and waited to be called. Already she saw him burnt black and crumbling between her fingers like soot, his old scars gone behind new ones.  
But they never called her.  
  
The living resumed life, having endured against all odds.  
  
Ravens brought the news of baby Rickon’s death. Then Jon’s, who had come back to life to be killed again, not even Ghost could prevent it, the faithful direwolf died with its master this time. Jon had not risen from death a second time, all the gods were cruel.  
Shaggydog wandered to the gates one night and howled his chilling mourning. Sansa had to throw herself between the direwolf and the swords, armed with nothing but a candle, and wearing only her long night robe, barefoot in the fresh snows.  
Then Bran returned, without Summer but with Meera Reed, and then Arya came too, still reeling from Nymeria’s sacrifice, her nerves raw. Her siblings, starving and half strangers. The four of them learned to know each other again, slowly.  
The Seven Kingdoms had a new queen from an old line. Sansa feared this was what would wipe out what remained of her family for good. But Daenerys did not carry out revenge for her brother anymore. She too had enough of death.  
  
A new village had been raised on either side of the bones of the lost prince Aegon’s dragon’s, left to bleach in the sun once the meat had been picked clean. The meat besides the fire glands had not been poison and hunger had dulled the abomination it felt to be. Surrounded by the hopeful outline of a young forest and trees barely more than saplings, life went on.  
  
When the survivors told tales of that night, huddled to the hearth as if the cold had never left them, they talked of the limping ghost that had called the dead to tear them away from the living. And Sansa kept her tongue.  
Victory would not chase away despair for long months. People kept on dying a slow hungry death, like the people who survived King's Landing scorched in green fire were left to starve. But those were free men’s deaths, bittersweet and welcomed.  
  
For a few years after they had regained their ancestral seat, after her last siblings had come back home, Sansa had sometimes looked over the rampart, wondering where and how Sandor was. Never saying out loud that she thought of her former captor.  
But then, the years had simply put him out of her worries.  
  
Sansa thought he had died too.  
  


* * *

  
Later that evening, after calming her fury and confusion, she went to the room he had been given, entering without asking for permission. She feared he would refuse.  
“Your steward is an idiot.”, he said with disdain, “I asked to see your brother in private. Not you and the entire castle.”  
He was older of course, as she was. He looked as battered as his rain-soaked and wind-whipped riding leathers. But, gods, he was still strong and still terribly tall.  
  
Sansa didn't know if it was his words or the coldness in those eyes that still refused to look at her, but when her mouth opened, it was anger that poured out, shouting what the whole castle would talk about for days. Sansa properly scolded him, on his mean words, his carelessness, and she added for good measure, his lack of a respect for a lady. And when she thought she was over, memories of the Red keep surfaced and she had to bite her tongue not to say more.  
  
He took it all without a protest.  
  
“Where were you? What happened to you?”, she finally asked.  
“You shouldn't worry about the likes of me.”, he grunted from the other side of the room.  
“That's for me to decide.”, she snapped dryly, sitting on the bed, not trusting her legs to carry her much longer, “I want to know why you're here.”  
He owed her as much. He looked at her then. The grey gaze that had burnt a hole through her over a decade ago, only anger then, seized her and she felt almost younger. Frailer.  
His eyes were a little less cold now. Nearly shy. No, she corrected herself, guilty.  
  
“You remember the boy on the Trident? The one Joffrey...”, he winced.  
“I remember. Sit. Are you hurt?”  
He sat at the other end of the bed, his leg stiff. “Old wound complains at the rain.”  
She nodded, her mind fumbling for a name. “The butcher’s boy. What about him?”  
“I want to see his folks.”  
“You're here to apologize?”, she realized. Somehow, she was disappointed but she felt bad for the feeling.  
“I am.”  
She sighed. “His father died in King’s Landing. The others, they're all dead. As far as I know. Killed by the ironborn, or the Boltons.” Or the Dragon. “I don't know for sure. But they're all gone. Almost everybody died.” There was no one left to refuse or grant his request. He nodded.  
“I thought they might be.”  
Sansa felt sadness for him, once again. The feeling as familiar as his hardness.    
“Did you travel far?” He nodded again.  
There was a knock on the door and Bran rolled in. He looked surprised to see his sister sitting on a stranger’s bed at the hour of the bat, as if he hadn't heard her shouts.  
Outside, Shaggydog sniffed under the door insistently.  
“I sent word for the lady of Tarth”, he told Sandor, rubbing his hands as he often did after a long day of moving his chair around Winterfell. “You missed her by a few weeks”.  
“Brienne?”, Sansa was quite fond of the warrior woman who had saved her, “Why?”  
“Sandor Clegane is still a criminal, wanted for savage crimes committed under his helm. He says Brienne has knowledge that can clean his name.”  
Brienne had never mentioned anything to Sansa. Yet she had heard of those crimes. Sandor had came to seek the truth, even if it could have meant his head.  
Her brother seemed more curious than surprised now.  
“You two know each other?”, Bran asked curiously at the filthy traveler and his ever delicate sister.  
  
Sansa glanced at her brother, with his soft features but sad eyes. A mop of auburn hair falling over his face, hiding heavy eyes that saw much and rested little. Sansa had spoken to Bran of her torments, those she could bring into words, but she had kept her many encounters with Sandor to herself. Arya knew part of it, but she hadn't been the one to tell her. Sandor had.  
Sansa hesitated on the words to chose, “Sandor was Joffrey’s sworn shield. In King’s Landing.”  
“A Lannister man?”, Bran asked, as if he didn't know.    
“Not anymore, Bran. And even then, he saved me from many beatings.”  
“I didn't save you from much.”, Sandor scoffed.  
“You never beat me like the others.”  
“Small feat that is, not beating a girl.”  
  
He was about to protest again but Sansa added for Bran, whose eyes betrayed anguish for his sister’s past torment, “Sandor offered to take me home when he deserted. But I refused because…”  
“You refused because I came to you covered in blood and guts and I could have killed you. You were right to sent me away.”  
  
She had been terrified, it was true. The screams of the battle merging with the green blaze still appeared in her dreams, along with the white of bones and snow bursting out of wounds she had stitched close. When Sandor Clegane had came to her room at the battle’s bitter turn, she had seen the terrible Hound took hold of him entirely. The Hound could have killed her. Sandor hadn't.  
“I didn't. I didn't send you away. My lord, you asked and left without my answer.”  
“Your answer!”, he sneered, “Don't you remember the blade?”, he asked, as angry as he was shameful.  
“I forgave long ago.” She supposed she had. How could she hate that man who had wept after those hateful words had poured out of his twisted mouth?  
“Still haven't learned, I see. What does someone must do to you that you wouldn't forgive?”  
Her fingers went to her lips, unbidden. Bran raised his hands to quiet them both.  
“Clegane, while you wait for Brienne of Tarth to come to us, you can thank me for not throwing you in a cell by working.”  
“Fine. Just tell me what you’d have me do.”  
The Lord of Winterfell thought for a minute. “Our master-at-arms died, you can replace him. Arya has her own folks to train. Meera trains most with the spear but we need someone who knows how to wield a sword. Or is your wound too deep?”  
Sandor rose, steady despite his mouth twitching. “I can fight. And I can ride fine too. It’s just stiff now and then. I won't grow whiskers though, I warn you.”  
The siblings smiled, remembering Ser Rodrick.  
Her brother motioned to leave. “That's settled then, we'll leave you to rest. Sansa?”, he called to her.  
“Goodnight, brother.”  
He stayed there, obviously searching for words.  
“I will be fine. We must talk.”  
Bran looked worried but left, his trust meaning everything to her.  
  
“Why didn't you want to see me? I'm not to get your apologies?”, she asked as soon as the door shut.  
“Need I say it? You know why.”  
“Do I?” Only Sandor Clegane could be at fault and still angry.  
“Why would you forgive what I did?”  
“You were afraid. Lost, you said it yourself. I know that.”  
“I still did it.”  
“Did you meant to kill me? Or to take me by force?”  
He sat back, avoiding her eyes.  
“I was out of my mind.”  
“Did you?”  
“I think he did.”  
“Wh… The Hound? ”  
  
Sansa realized that today he thought he wanted it then. It was solace he had wanted from her. Comfort. Or else he wouldn't have come to her chamber, a heap on the bed, trembling like a child in a nightmare that never truly ended.  
  
“I thought it was as bad as leaving you for Stannis’ army to bite through.”  
“Stannis lost.”  
“I know that. Now! But then we all expected to die in that battle.”  
  
“ _Expected it_.”, Sansa thought. And years later, Sansa knew too how honorable Stannis had been with Jon. And Jeyne too, once he had won Winterfell back. But Sansa couldn't think about it now. Thinking about her brother and her friend always tore apart the peace she tried to wrap herself in.   
She would have been safe with Sandor, not with the Hound.  
  
It was a long moment before he spoke again. “When you wouldn't come, I just…”  
His voice trailed off. Sansa fought back the tears she wanted to shed.  
“I was never angry at you for leaving.”  
“I was! They told me they married you.”  
“Who told you?”  
“My brother's men.”  
The fight he lost, Sansa remembered what Arya had talked about.  
“To Tyrion. They did.”  
He studied her with a hard clenched jaw.  
“So you're angry at me, but not for doing nothing when they beat you, not for putting my dagger to your throat and not for leaving you there to warm a Lannister bed. Is that so, little bird?”, he asked, leaning towards her.  
The nickname send a bolt through her belly.  
“I told you.”  
“Then why are you angry at me for?”  
She was as puzzled as he was, the resentment was real.  
“You never came back!”, she blurted.  
She said it and knew it was true. He sat back.  
“I guess I'm guilty of that too.”, he muttered grimly.  
“You have to accept that I can be angry or forgive and you have your word to say on neither.”, she said, her hand reaching for his arm.  
“Don't !”, he growled in a low voice, full of guilt again.  
Her eyes grew wetter and she wiped her sleeves across them, unashamed.  
“I prayed for you. But the Hound and you…”  
She couldn't go on.  
“It was all me, bloody dog and all. I don't deny that. And I've done plenty worse than what you know.”  
“Do you regret it?”  
“Some of it. If I'm true not as much as standing there when they beat you.”  
She had not imagined he would still feel guilt over her fate.  
“What could you have done?”  
“Anything.”  
“Then you would be dead. Joffrey would have hated me more if you had helped me. You would have died for nothing and I would have had some more bruises.”  
He shook his head.  
“That wouldn’t have been nothing. I don't know how you can stand here and still be _courteous_. It’s bad enough that your brother didn’t even try to have me in irons. You, you have to come to me to tell me you’ve forgiven me! Me! I don’t understand it. Maybe Arya will come next to thank me for being my prisoner through the Riverlands. Bloody Starks!”  
She didn’t understand either. He had always hated her courtesies. Yet even after everything she had been through, her old armor felt like the safest way to he true to herself.  
  
“They made you a Lannister.”, he said angrily. “And...”  
“It's over now. I'm no longer married.”, she cut him.  
This surprised him.  
“I had my marriage annulled.”  
“They let you? Good for you.”  
She smiled. She loved that he forgot to be scornful.  
“Who did they made you marry then?”  
“Marry? No one.”  
“Was that your bastard on your lap?”  
Sansa was puzzled. “Rickon? No! It's Arya’s!”  
“She's got a child?”, he scoffed, “With Ser the knight of the hollow hill, no less, if he's the one I saw. Must be keeping the whole castle up at night if he's half as stubborn as the two of them were.”  
“No, he's the quiet one of the two she has. Joana’s the real terror.”  
“You never had one yourself?”, he asked.  
“No.” How could she. “And you?”  
“No.”  
  
Somehow, this was the answer she wanted. There was so much more Sansa wanted to ask, but her exhaustion was getting too strong to fight.  
  
“Don't go.”, she simply said, too tired for pretense. “Repay me, repay Arya, by staying and be…”  
What should he be? Good? Repentant? Hers? “ _Protect me this time._ ”, was what she wanted to say, but she was safe at last. He had done so much harm. Surely he could not leave, not now, not so soon. But he wouldn’t answer, not look at her again.   
  
“I won't leave this room until you promise to stay.” She knew he wouldn't lie.  
  
His loud breathing was all that could be heard in the small cell for a long while.  
“I’ll stay.”, he finally grumbled, “But if your sister finally decides to kill me, then I’ll go.”  
  
When she left, Sansa went to the godswood, urging herself not to break until she was safely hidden. The godswood had been the only place that didn't burn, or bleed, during the attack. She felt at peace when she prayed there, but tonight, she did not know what she felt. Her heart bumped against her ribs in a maddening frenzy and before she even reached the end of the yard, she was crying.  
  
Her ragged sobs were so loud, even her hand clamped on her mouth could not smother them. If she didn’t stop she would wake the entire castle.  
  
She was stupid to forgive. How could she know he was a better man?  
Sansa sat underneath the heart tree. Shaggydog cut his way through the darkness and pushed his muzzle between her arms. Ever since Rickon had died, his half wild wolf had took a turn for the worst, snapping its teeth at every hands, snarling and growling, before he had finally shook off his grief when Bran had returned.  
  
Holding the direwolf, she cried until dawn broke, the steam rising lazily from the pools, amidst thoughts of her lost family, Lady, and that man she still didn’t know why she couldn’t part with. Before long she couldn't have said who she wept for.  
  
When the tears dried up, she was too tired to climb back to her room. She went for Arya who she knew always rose early and broke her fast with the kitchen maids when she visited Winterfell. Her sister was plagued by her own dreams.  
  
“I thought he came back because I wouldn't kill him…”, Arya confessed.  
It took Sansa a moment to remember what Arya had said about when she left him to die. Her sister started sobbing then. It was hard not to believe in ghosts when they came back.  
  
Sansa comforted her as best she could. She had never thought that Arya could still be afraid of him after of all these years. Their bond as sisters had never snapped, but it had grown tenuous, always putting them back in each other’s path in confusing ways. They never really knew how to simply be kin.  
  
“He caught me when I ran away from the Brotherhood Without Banners. He wanted to ransom me to Robb and mother. He always threatened to beat me bloody if I tried to run off. But he never did!”, Arya added after seeing horror on her sister's face, “Never. But he did… scare me. When we arrived at the Twins... You know what happened, I ran to the castle, I ran to mother, I did. I wanted to see her. I wanted to save her. I didn't care if I died.”  
Sansa hadn’t known that. Arya rubbed her head.  
“He took me back. After that, he forced me to rise when I’d rather sleep and dream of Nymeria and never wake. He always gave me half of his food, little did he have. I didn't go as hungry with him as with the others. He even armed me. He was awful, he really was. But he still saved me, and kept me, even if he would have gladly drunk himself to death.”  
  
Sansa had no doubts of that.  
  
“He begged me to kill him but I didn't… He had made me so angry. I never believed him when he talked about you. How you sang for him and how he saved you. But when he was dying… he said… he said things, but I think he couldn't bear the fever anymore and he wanted me to end it.”  
  
Sansa tried to swallow the lump in her throat and failed.    
  
“I… I asked him to stay. Do you want him to go?”, she asked, terrified of the answer.  
“He's still the man who killed Mycah. But I… Maybe he's not the same.”, Arya replied.  “If you and Bran trust him, then I’ll try too.”  
  
When morning came, he had not left. They seized each other across the great hall, Sansa as tense as a bow string. Cleaned of the roads’ filth, he somehow offered a younger, more respectable version of the man he had arrived as. Standing, she saw now his shoulders bore none of the great anger that had always been his. His rough edges smoothed by years on the road. Shamelessly, she drunk in the sight of him, she had never felt so small.  
Sandor’s chest rose and fell in deep and slow breaths and his eyes were as red as hers. Most of all, he stayed silent as a ghost to the many provocations.  
  
Bran announced Sandor’s presence, officially, but every last person in Winterfell already knew who he was. It was the biggest piece of gossip Winterfell had had in years and everyone had a comment and a glance for him. The lady Sansa and the bastard king’s dog had lingered in the Red Keep together, but surely they could not know each other well.  
The names that were uttered in angry whispers were true, Sansa knew, however terrible they were. But the household knew that the Wise Wolf never made decisions he hadn't long examined.  
  
Coldly, carefully, they made a place for him.


	2. Part 2

As months slowly came and left and autumn faded to snows, Brienne finally made her way back to Winterfell, declared under oath what she knew and Bran made Sandor Clegane’s _innocence_ official. Before long, duty threw Brienne back on the road she had came from. A hedge knight had to keep on travelling to serve the realm.   
Sansa smiled sadly at Bran declaring Sandor innocent. There was something ill-fitting and mocking in that word. But she knew now that if the horrors he had done were never to be cleansed, the stain of someone else's evil was not his to bear.   
Truth was ever so important to him and it wasn’t the worst of his flaws.   
  
Sansa went to bed every night afraid he would be gone in the morning, gone at the dawn, like he had disappeared after the battle. But when the time came that Sandor could return to the life he had before wandering north, he stayed.  
  
He told Arya he was not seeking revenge for refusing to kill him. She asked if she had been right to leave him to die instead. He still didn't know.  
  
Bran told him he was welcomed as long as he wished. Why he would trust Sandor so blindly, Sansa didn't know. But her brother had a habit of giving faith to his dreams, green and otherwise.  
Sandor served as a master-at-arms and to Sansa’s greatest surprise, went on his knee in front of Bran, Meera and Shaggydog, and the entire household, to vow to teach to defend themselves every child who wanted to, boys and girls alike. As long as he served.   
  
Even kneeling Sandor was huge. He bowed without pride, his eyes fixed on the ground, his mouth a tight line interrupted by the twist of scars. Sansa had looked at the kneeling man, dignified as he never really was before, a cloak draped about him, lined with fox fur and so dark it was almost black. There was the silhouette of a lone dog on that cloak, not quite a sigil. There wasn’t much left of House Clegane, and not enough to be proud of, he had confessed to her. So she had made it only for him, he who had nobody in any realm. That dog didn’t snarl, didn’t bare his teeth, but looked in the distance, posed, noble and vigilant, its ears pricked.  
Faithful.  
  
She thought how this dark cloak fitted his dark deeds so much better than the white one ever had. She heard the men of Winterfell whisper ominously, like they often did, and Sansa’s throat was so painful, she could barely speak.  
  
“What is he doing?”, Arya had asked, astonished. She brushed her braid aside. She wore a soft leather jerkin and loose skirts that did not hinder her movements when she fought, or train or ran around. Its many pockets hid too what she wanted to keep out of sight. She had grown into a beautiful woman, agile and dexterous. She had taken the place she wanted in life, and Sansa admired her for it.  
“Vowing.”, Sansa had answered, staring at his knee in the dirt of the yard, her breath captive in her lungs.   
“After all the fuss he's made about spitting on vows.”, Gendry reflected, puzzled.  
  
Bran had then made a point of honoring his valor in the battle for dawn, for the entire castle to see. To stop the whispers. It failed miserably. Sandor had not denied being the fighter the remaining men of Winterfell called the ghost of the battle for dawn, though he would not talk about it. When she had asked about the dragon, he had grown so pale she had not pushed the matter.  
  
In Winterfell, Sandor’s fighting skills were put to good use. Meera had been in charge of the training but she was not nearly as good with swords as she was with a spear. She welcomed the help, and though they couldn't be more different, they completed themselves well. He taught children to be fast, silent and, if the time ever came, deadly. Sansa knew one day Arya would be ready to share her own fighting skills with him. But now she only watched training and gave advice to the skinny and scrawny. “Good advice”, Sandor judged.  
  
Being trusted by the lord of Winterfell smoothed his dark reputation but his scars ensured his past would never be forgotten. It didn't matter that so many men had burns of their own after the dragon, his were the Hound’s, and his name was still used to terrify children into obedience.  
Young ones would ask on behalf of their parents where his helm was, the helm that Gendry called _cursed steel_. They wanted to know if he was still a dog. Still rabid.  
They asked about the boy king he had served, about being Kingsguard, about the queen Cersei, about the Bloody Hand’s green fires of the Blackwater. About the siege of the realm and the sea and the lands from one end to the kingsroad to the other.   
Some had even asked about the Mountain and his grey eyes had clouded with exhaustion but he had remained calm.   
The sting of stolen glances slid off him. He would talk to Sansa or her siblings, but most often kept to himself. He served, dutiful as ever, lonely as ever, but she saw how little by little he became part of the household, how a few men would treat him with respect. How folks no longer stammered in fear at his approach. That little meant so much to Sansa. He served where neither of them were prisoners and she was free to look at the man he turned out to be and be proud.   
  
Little by little, she discovered a new man with a tight leash on his fears, and a tighter one on his anger. One who had forgone wine and endless spite. She found she trusted such a man.  
  
He helped raise the heavy panels of the new glass gardens. He filled the kennels with a new pick of dogs, picked a new kennelmaster who did not hit the hounds senseless like its predecessor did when the animals did not meet his expectations. He advised Bran on what remaining southern lords were truly trustworthy and to what extent. He bettered the organization of the household guard and the choice of its members.  
  
It sadden her that a man whose house sigil was a dog, who exhibited all the good traits of the animal, was not master to one himself. She knew he had grown with dogs, and it must have been without a doubt the only good memories he had left of his childhood. So she asked for the new kennelmaster his help to pick a strong-willed and devoted puppy.  
  
She wanted his friendship so badly, the thought whirled around in her mind. And she worked tirelessly to gain it. They spoke, him and her, almost every night when their duties were done. She drew the real man out, with her words, slowly. What drinking to oblivion had not erased after all.  
She found the child he had been and who he had grown to be, and why. All those valours he had not dared believe in when there had been no justice. Secrets he had kept for more important men than him.   
And he found her too, who she really was inside her armor, who she sometimes forgot she was. The twists and turns of who she had been, who she was, who she appeared to be, who she needed to think she was. The tough core wrapped in the velvet and the silks.   
She wept bitterly the nights when he detailed the events that had taken place after they parted. He recounted his time with her sister in the same light as Arya had, something that Sansa had worried he wouldn't do.   
  
And then he finally told her of the Quiet Isle, of the Elder Brother who had nursed him back to health.  
  
He had dug graves for a while as an acolyte. Sansa thanked the Mother Brienne had not spotted him when she visited or else she would have brought justice to him.  
After a while, his health and youth had finally grown too restless for him to stay amongst the men of faith. Already wanted for desertion by the dying house of Lannister, he had discovered being accused of rapes and murders he had not committed. The butcher he had claimed to be to scare her was nothing compared to the Butcher of Saltpans and his actual deeds, a monster closer to Gregor than Sandor had ever been.   
  
When returning to the Quiet Isle for proof had turned too much of a risk, he had travelled north to Gulltown, resigned to board any ship to a free city, working where he could on his way there to pay for passage. But almost all the way up the gangway, he had turned back. Why, he could not tell Sansa. He had no dread, no terrible nightmares, only a great shame and the sense that his place was not ever further south.  
  
After that he only went back north, avoiding the main roads. He had hid, waiting for a chance, in some village north of Winterfell. Disguised again as a brother under a low cowl and roughspun tunic.  
“Waiting for what?”, Sansa asked.  
“Waiting.”, he only answered. Building back his strength, she thought, his courage, his own sense of worth. Ridding the realm of the evil he could reach.   
  
When the warning had rode down from the crumbling Wall, he had seen from afar the soldiers, men and women alike, getting ready for the final battle, barely more than children now that the men had died in the many wars that had ended by then.  
  
Those who remained were as ill prepared, starved, and flea-ridden as every common soldiers he had ever known. But what had chilled him to the bone was their own certainty they were all going to die. None expected glory or victory, they only wished to postpone the worst a little while longer.  
Some had bits of armor looted from some battlefield but no more than a handful. A few more had leather plates, or mail shirts, little good it would do them. Of horses, there were maybe half a dozen, and half starved creatures at that.   
  
He had known then what to do.  
  
After the battle, he had fled the fire once again, this roaring living fire far more terrible than the one Gregor had used. Even brought down and dying, the dragon had terrified him. But his good deed kept to himself, his name bore the same taint as before, even now that the Mountain had fallen with his puppeteer and their queen. To the commons, the brothers were dead as they deserved.  
  
He told her with a voice full of repressed hurt that after he learned of Gregor’s death, he sometimes woke up some days feeling relieved and others only bitter at the loss of his revenge. Sansa thought he probably always would. If he had not killed Gregor in King’s Landing that long gone tourney day, when he had every excuse to kill him lawfully, he should not have been the one to end his brother's life anyway. Not the man who had knelt at his king’s command, not knowing the sword would miss his head. Knowing it was wildfire that had ended Gregor made it even more hard to swallow.  
  
“They said Gregor and I were the same.”, he confided in her one late evening as the great hall was almost empty. “Bastard been dead for years and he still has me by the neck. Nobody thought twice on what they heard when they were told I was the butcher of Saltpans. I took the Hound as my face, no reason it should die when I did.”  
“It kept you alive in King’s Landing, didn't it? Being the Hound.”   
“Alive? It did. Killed me all the while too.”   
“I heard of it while in the Eyrie. About Saltpans.”  
He mulled over that.  
“They heard of it in all Seven Kingdoms, or near enough it makes no matter.”  
“It made quite a tale. Joffrey’s sworn shield turned mad.”  
He scoffed and asked, “You believed it?”, almost as casually as an afterthought.   
“No.” She did not want to say more but she owed him the truth, however ugly. “Everybody else did.”  
He sighed angrily.  
“See? Elder Brother blamed himself for leaving the helm but had I not left that name and all it said…”  
She slid her hand in his fist. It drew a few curious looks but she did not care. None were more surprised than him though.   
“What are you doing?”, he rasped, frowning at her hand.   
She did not know so she ignored the question.   
“Why did you came after all this time?”  
“I heard about here often. They talk of your brother the same way they did your father. Your brother is just, even when it pains him. Not all Lords bother with justice when no one's making them. Had an earful about your sister the great hero and her hellish direwolf too.”  
“Truly? Is that why you…”  
“And I wanted to see with my own eyes that you were safe.”  
He had disappeared after the dragon had crept in Winterfell’s skies to slash the night sky with bursts of bright cruel sunlight. He hadn’t even known she had seen him.   
“But then your steward is too daft to know what discreet means.”  
She squeezed his hand and said “I’m glad he is.”, her voice barely above a whisper. Suddenly shy, she couldn't meet his eyes and, for once, it did not make him scowl.   
“You said you wanted to restore your…”, she hesitated, neither _honor_ nor _reputation_ were appropriate words.   
He exhaled a long sigh. “I heard of Tarth’s new mission on my way here. But I came to see you safe. At last.”   
In her chest, her heart started to beat madly. He studied her unapologetically.   
“Not to apologize to Mycah’s family? Like you said.”  
He let the silence answer for him for a long while. He shook his head.   
“I thought about it long when I was making my way here. About it all.”  
“About…”  
“Why I wanted to come here. I realized on my way. I had to come and… for the boy, and for myself. But I...” He hesitated. “I wanted to see you.” he blurted out almost angrily. Defiantly.    
Sansa blushed at his admission. To see her, yes, but not be caught red-handed. It mattered less to her why he had came, now that he was staying. Not now she knew all the reasons why.   
“If I had not asked you to stay, you would have left?”  
“Yes.”   
“If you had to die for executing Mycah, you would have accepted it?”  
“I've lived long enough.”  
He would go to his grave with the relief of completing a task long pushed back, she realized.   
“No!”, she hit the table with the flat of her hand, loudly, startling the remaining drinkers.   
His own hand closed into a tight fist again.   
“I've long outgrown my use. And my worth.”  
“How can you say that?” Couldn't he see she needed him?  
“Like I mean it.” He caught her wrist and pulled her close to his ravaged face, the intensity of his gaze held her captive. “Just swear one thing to me, Sansa. That's all I ask.”   
She tried to pull away but his grip was tight.  
“No pyre for me when I’m gone. Cut me in ten if you're afraid I’ll come back a wight, but don't. Burn. Me.”  
His words filled all the space in her head and he let her go.   
She fled the room in anger and dread. Even if he was to stay and be safe, there still was a pit in him, filled with angry waters of a dark color that hid its real depth so perfectly. He had only stepped back a few paces from its edge. But by the old gods, it was still there.  
  
She avoided him on the next couple of days, absorbing his self loathing, searching a way around it. But it was then Sandor delivered her his hardest blow.  
  
When the castle had fallen in exhausted sleep, he gathered the remaining Starks for a private audience.  
  
“It was Baelish who put a dagger at your father's throat.”, he started without flourish.  
He thought she would ask him to leave, she realized, and had one last thing to confess.   
“Back in King’s Landing. He was the one who told of his plans to Cersei, that's why she was ready to strike like she did. For years Littlefinger told everyone he had bedded your mother when she was a girl. I was there that day they took your father, that's all Littlefinger ever waited for.”   
He looked straight into Sansa’s eyes when he said the last part. Of course he had known all along what she had done by going to the Queen. And maybe he had realized she would not have ever trusted Baelish if she had known what he had done to their father. The revelation was years too late, Littlefinger was long dead, but they welcomed the truth nonetheless. It didn't change what Sansa had done as a girl, but now she knew there would have been no escape anyway.   
  
“That's one of the things that I had to bargain for with your kingly brother.”, he nodded to Arya, “You remember.”  
She glared in defiance, biting her lip and tense as a arrow string. She remembered.  
  
Bran thanked him for the truth. Arya hooked her arm through hers, supporting her as she needed it herself.  
A secret only a few words long. But what words. What guilt. She wished Sandor would not look through her so easily, not for all her family to see. They shouldn't know she was hiding something. Something she crushed deep down, and in return it smothered her.   
If she lost what remained of her family it would kill her.   
She felt everything anew. Her screams that were good for nothing. The ground vanishing under her feet. The cheers of the witnesses swelling until it was all there was in the world. And then darkness.   
Her heart beat a treacherous rhythm, giving away all her secrets. But Sandor had said all he meant to say, and even Bran who knew so much did not say another word. No one but Sandor saw how she clutched the back of the chair she leaned on. How everything in her was fighting the call of oblivion.   
  
King’s Landing had been a viper's nest, and none of the Starks had been prepared for it. And this, after all, was what Sandor had always told her.  
  
After that night, they talked more, out of a terrible worried need.  
  
One late evening, when they were the last ones in the great hall, she detailed how she exposed lord Baelish to the lords of the Vale assembled for the tourney, aware of the dreadful consequences of her possible success, and the terrible risks if she failed.  
All because lord Baelish made one mistake. It could either have been an excellent or terrible news that he received that day, she never knew. But when evening came, he drank. And then he called for her and started talking.   
  
Behind him hanged a dress commissioned for her wedding. It was the first time that seeing her family's colors filled her with disgust. The gown in itself was beautiful, all fine lace and soft silk. A surprise that she would have done without nonetheless because it meant his plan could reach another step at any moment.  
  
He had tried to kiss her and he read her hands on his chest as a tease, when she had only tried to push him away. He wanted her so, he would read anything he wanted in her words, her gestures, her eyes.  
He wanted her praise too. How he had waited for her to commend his cunning, his bravery. How smart had it been to use a northern girl he had plucked from the capital to pass as Arya? He had her broken in in his brothel. A mousy creature with the proper accent for the wedding with Bolton’s bastard.  
Cold sweat all along her spine, Sansa had handed him another glass of Arbor gold.  
No, he did not remember her name, Alayne. But did it matter?  
She was missing he heard, fled Winterfell with one of Ramsay’s men. “But fear not”, he had told her, “On foot, they will be found soon. If she’d caught, she will start making an heir again.”  
If she died, they could plant someone else in her place, if the bastard had wits to keep her escape a secret. “It has been done before. No one cares about her”, Petyr Baelish had chuckled to her neck.  
If Stannis found her, well, her bastard _brother_ would confirm that it was not Arya Stark.   
It's was all working perfectly.  
He had yanked the next glass directly from her hand. Sansa was terrified that from one glass to another, one gulp maybe, he might let slip the little control he held over himself, and finally do what he wanted to do to her. But it made him talk, and she needed to know.   
But he had reassured her that she had a better claim and he would protect that _fiercely_ , like he protected her. Not like her oaf of her father, “Eddard!”, he had erupted in laughter. He was starting to forget his own precautions about her true name. Sansa remembered his hand sneaking below her breast, but that, she did not tell Sandor.  
Sweetsleep was working perfectly on her cousin, he had continued. And Harry Hardyng might not like her but he was not destined to die an old man. But first she would marry him for all the lords of the Vale to see. His plans were solid and he had never encountered anyone who would surprise him.  
“In the morning he had forgotten what he had said.”, she explained to Sandor, shivering at the recollection of her mother's name in his drunken slur.   
And he forgot what he had done. Or if not, he acted like it.  
But that same morning, as Sansa cleaned the wounds on her wrists and picked a long sleeved dress, she took a decision. She would not deny what she knew, not again, emboldened by the presence of the warrior woman Brienne who had arrived for the tourney. Inspired by her bravery, her loyalty, her sense of justice. Inspired by a woman who searched the war-torn lands for her, at great risk, to keep a vow to her mother, she had overheard as much. A true knight, like she had dreamed.   
She asked maester Colemon the truth about sweetsleep. Sweetrobin’s health was declining rapidly and she understood she had been made the accomplice of a slow murder, one pinch of sweetsleep at the time.  
She asked for the latest ravens scrolls from the north, _as per her father's request_. She studied in secret maps of the Vale and the North and kept the ones she needed. She secured well fed healthy horses, telling the head stableman that her father wished to gift them to whoever would win the tourney but it had to remain secret. People were eager to please the lord protector.  
She confessed to Brienne, terrified she might not believe her, or even refuse. But she believed her, to her surprise. She judged Sansa resembled lady Catelyn and Sansa wept to hear it. She missed her family so much her heart would not stop breaking. The woman offered to take her away that very night. But Sansa wanted justice. She needed it and so did the realm.  
It had been a terrible gamble. Revealing her true name left her exposed to opportunists. Queen Cersei would know where she was hiding. It would expose the Vale too. But if she removed herself, then lord Baelish’s plans all unraveled, one after the other.  
The lords of the Vale could decide she had been an accomplice. They might not believe she was Sansa Stark. Even succeeding wasn't without danger, quite the opposite.  
She had pleaded to save her true father's life, and failed. Years later, at a different court she found herself asking for protection from her false father. Her revelations caused a great stir. He produced a dagger when he was captured, but he was easily overpowered by the many knights he had invited.  
  
Sweetrobin was absent at the trial, his health could not let him stand. Robert took Petyr’s demise harshly. He shook and shook more and shook again. He hated Alayne for attacking his new father, even one that had murdered both his true parents. He was so young. He threw terrible tantrums and claimed she must have helped Littlefinger. She had been right there that day, _hadn't she?_ Sansa feared he would have her killed by any of the knights eager to be in his favor, so she gave up trying. In time he would understand that she had acted to protect them both. She trusted lady Waynwood to care for her cousin as she had cared for Harrold Hardyng.  
Sweetrobin’s heir’s interest in her rekindled when her true name was revealed. Sansa despised him all the more for it but kept her armor of courtesy, she might still need the Vale’s friendship one day.   
  
Lord Baelish asked who would champion him. He had fortunes to offer, lands and offices, but he found no volunteer and rescinded his plea to defend his innocence by combat. He knew by experience that he did not possess the skill, the stamina, the strength.  
All during the trial, Sansa was guarded even more closely than she had been in King’s Landing. It was lucky she had already secured what she needed for fleeing. Brienne awaited only her signal. As a young highborn woman, flowered and yet still a maid with a husband that would die soon by all accounts and a claim without match, Sansa was not going to let herself be yet another prisoner to someone's ambition.  
  
Sansa remembered the cruel angles of Petyr Baelish's mangled body and the weak wheezes that left his mouth before the sword fell. And the burning hatred that lit his grey green eyes when he stared at her.   
When his head had finally rolled off the block, after the four blows it took to severe it from its neck, she had followed it down as it hit each step with a little thud, still waiting for him to spin a lie even after he had stopped blinking, to scheme his head back on his shoulders. Backing up into Brienne’s arms in fear the head would roll to her feet, the big woman had tried covering Sansa’s eyes. But she had pushed her rough hands away to witness the life spurting out of Petyr Baelish. A choice she would soon regret.   
“Justice.”, she had whispered to the roaring oblivious crowd and she had been the one who had made sure it found Littlefinger.   
  
But nothing kept her there now. When it was time, Brienne and her fled into the night.  
Sansa couldn't know who to trust in truth, except for the warrior woman who inspired her so and Mya Stone, a bastard of the old king who helped them flee the Gates of the Moon in the night. Their fathers were friends, even if her own sire meant nothing to her, Mya wished to help and she knew the best roads.  
They brought food, a few change of clothes and little money and jewellery she had. Winter was fast descending on the land. The storm that broke out hid their tracks but three times Sansa thought they would die in the snows during the weeks of their travels, following the coast to put as much distance as possible between them and the Twins. But Brienne gave two fingers to the cold to brought her safe to lord Reed. Before they could sink into a bog and disappear forever, the sentries who found them brought them to Greywater Watch.  
Lord Reed remained a loyal bannerman. Even when his son and daughter had died during the sack of Winterfell, he kept faith.  
When Brienne and her were safe, when she had eaten her first hot meal in weeks, she cleaned the travel’s filth at last, scrubbed the dark from her hair, the caked blood from her thighs.  
She washed away Alayne. She rid herself of Lord Baelish.  
All the time she protected Sansa, Brienne never tried to pass as a man. Sansa sometimes admired her in her works, that tall woman, clad in armor, the glint of Valyrian steel at her hip that had been her father's Ice, and she thought of long dead Arya, who would emulate her, if she was only given an armor, a sword and training.  
Sansa was finishing her tale when the last candle that threw cruel shadows on Sandor’s scars suddenly gutted out, leaving only his voice.  
“You were brave.”, he judged. A truth from him, she knew. He did not care for false praise, never had.  
She had been brave, but coming from him it meant so much more. She needed no light to read it on his face.   
  
They talked again, every night without fail, Sandor's dog in deep sleep at his master's feet. It might have as well been magic, a ritual that unloaded some of the weight that nestled behind her ribs.  
His presence scattered away her fears, one by one. 

 

* * *

  
This late afternoon, after reviewing the plans for the new trades with the free cities, Sansa left Maester Tarly to join her brother at his request. She would go to Sandor when she was done with her duties, as he recovered from a blow an impatient apprentice had struck to the old thigh wound that still troubled him. She was still smiling when she entered the solar.  
  
Somber and silent, her brother handed her a letter.  
  
It was another marriage proposal like the many others before it, addressed to her, not Bran, in innocuous words yet its content twisted Sansa’s stomach. It spoke of an alliance but it was a threat in a thin disguise. “ _In case an ill fate should befall your brother. To secure her house’s future._ ”, it promised, unmistakable.  
  
Bran took the paper back, finally speaking, “I wanted you to know. I can't do much about it yet. There have been veiled threats such as this one in the past, and there'll be…”  
  
Silent, Sansa snatched back the letter from his hand and bolted for Sandor’s room. She entered without knocking as she sometimes did and found him in his bed.  
  
“One day you'll stroll in to something you don't want to see.”, he growled.  
“Read this.”, she told him, the blood chilled in her veins.   
He did, and as he opened his mouth to comment, Sansa blurted, “You have to marry me!”  
“Did you hit your head on your way here?”, he snarled. “It's your brother that worries you, isn't it? If you think they'd try to kill him in your bed, that's less wits and more dedication that I think they have.”  
“They’d hurt him to get my claim.”  
She couldn't believe it would happen again.   
“There’s not much of a threat if you ask me. He probably get letters like this one every time a stupid minor lord thinks he can best his master.”  
“No, it's different. I can feel it.”  
“They think him weak because he sits his chair and cannot walk. But your brother is stronger than these fools think he is. And if they only saw that direwolf, they'd think twice about treason, believe me.”  
“He won't be safe unless he and Meera have heirs.”  
“He has heirs, Sansa, beside you. Your sister, her children.”  
“They are after me in the line of succession. He's not safe.”  
“If you think people would still bargain on your womb, I believe that. But what you're asking…” He looked away. “You'd have me made a special bed on the floor of your room, is that how it would be?”, he said in a voice that resembled the Hound’s.   
Sansa blushed, the reality of what she'd asked him hitting her then. “I'm sorry. You surely wish to marry another woman.”  
He snorted.   
“Even if I did, I’d be hard pressed finding one willing.”  
As he sat up, the cover fell to his waist. He didn't wear a tunic but what caught her eyes were the burn scars that crawled all over his left arm. Those looked old but she still sat on the bed, hunched over him, grabbing his arm.   
“What happened?”  
“Dondarrion. Bastard fought me with a flaming sword.”  
She remembered Ser Beric and how Jeyne Poole had declared her love for him, two or three lifetimes ago. Arya and Gendry had talked about the fight with the Brotherhood Without Banners, but neither of them had mentioned fire.   
“At least, the arm I can hide.”, he said, half in jest.   
“Is there somewhere you didn't get cut or hit?”, she asked in disbelief.  
“Haven't checked behind.”  
She released his arm laughing and blushing, but stayed on the bed. Sansa thought that injured and defeated, crossed with scars, he looked more like the Warrior than he even did before.   
  
“How did you get an annulment?”, he finally asked, “Last I heard, your husband isn't dead.”  
“Tyrion? No!... When we… When we were wed, he said he would not touch me if I refused.”  
Something in Sandor crumbled. Sansa noticed because she knew him well now, but the signs were small, almost undetectable to someone who did not care about him.    
He hadn't known she had been spared. She gave him time to take in her words. In the silence, plainly visible, what he thought had happened to her had changed everything for him. For over ten years.   
"It’s good.”, he managed. “Wouldn’t have bet on that. You refused?”  
“I did.”, she answered. Of course she did, she had been three and ten. Too young to agree to it, and too old to pretend she did not know it was wrong for this to happen to her. Then she added, “And he kept his word.”, because it felt important.  
“Then Littlefinger had you.”, he stated, slowly, his face an unreadable mask, and she could tell he had wanted to ask this too for a long time.  
Sansa lowered her gaze, not in shame, but in disgust. “He asked for much. I only granted as little as he would get to be satisfied.”  
Even to this day, when she smelled mint, she felt little hands over her ribs.   
“If I could have cut this one, I would have.”  
“He died in terrible pain. It didn't do a thing for father and mother though.”, she whispered  
 _Mother...She's at peace now_ , Sansa thought hurriedly. _She’s at peace. At peace. She’s at peace. Gods, let her be at peace._ Arya had told her what had become of their mother, what Lord Beric had done. It had filled the nights free of lord Baelish’s horrors with other terrible nightmares, and still did, sometimes both.   
She once believed herself safe from the crawling hands of her nightmares because she thought they only stood still, patient, waiting for her to stumble back to their embrace. But as safe as she was, she fell so often, staying away from harmful memories offered no safe anchorage.   
“If you're still a maid, he never touched you?”, Sandor asked after a long silence, his voice husky and dry.    
Sansa has dreaded that question and in a way she wished he hadn’t asked. She reached for her lips instinctively. “He broke other seals.”   
Next to her Sandor boiled with fury and despite everything she was proud of his restraint.   
She could still feel the push on her head, her tongue where she didn't want it to be. And the taste.   
She had told herself more lies than truths to bear what happened to her. She hadn't been _good_ , nor Lord Baelish’s daughter. What he had called obedience and willingness, she knew had been terror. A silent terror that lingered after justice had been granted.   
  
“He took me after Joffrey’s wedding feast. Well, Ser Dontos did. I fled to the godswood when I realized Joffrey was dying and that they would kill me for it. Ser Dontos had promised to take me home.”, she smiled sadly touching her mouth, “I hoped he would be my Florian.”  
“That's what you were doing in the godswood. I knew you were up to something.”  
“You did?”  
“I knew you were not praying for Joffrey. For his death maybe. But you would not have risked a beating for that.”  
“No.”, she conceded, “Ser Dontos asked me to meet him there. He promised to take me home.”  
“You were not wiser, leaving with him rather than me. But then he didn't threatened to kill you, I wager.”  
Sansa sighed.  
“I was hoping he would be braver. Like you. But he did get me out of the city, drunk as he was. But when he got me to the boat, Lord Baelish killed him. In… In front of me. Lord Baelish... He made me wear the poison to the feast. On a net in my hair. He made me a killer. Everybody knew I disappeared when Joffrey died. Everybody thought me guilty alongside Tyrion. But I swear I did not know!”  
  
Sandor’s hand left his thigh but went back to it, almost immediately.  
  
“I had nowhere else to go. My brothers were dead, or I thought. My mother too. He called me Alayne. He killed my father and made me his daughter. His bastard. My aunt Lysa tried to kill me when he… he… When lord Baelish kissed… She would have thrown me out the moondoor.”  
“The moond…? Seven hells...”, Sandor cursed under his breath.   
“When Tyrion was declared dead, he tried to marry me to… to marry me again… If Brienne... if she… What he did… he called me his daughter but a… a daughter… His good obedient...”.   
She was shaking too badly to go on.   
“If you want to speak of what he did to you.”, he hesitated, looking at the scars that rounded her wrists like bracelets, “I’m listening.”   
  
They came from fetters. _“As much for keeping you safe from leaving as it is from being taken.”_ , she remembered Lord Baelish’s voice purring that night. But who would have cared for her? Jon had died as she had just learned, betrayed and murdered like their father. She had no more kin but her uncle Edmure and great uncle the Blackfish, one a Lannister prisoner and the other a ghost, much like she had been.  
When the wine had left him in the morning, he had let her go to be his good daughter to the world again.   
  
Sansa knew of all the women and children Lord Baelish had sacrificed to rise to power, just because he could. Nameless, faceless and of little consequence to him. Just because he had a talent for it. She knew of his whispers for her father’s head in Joffrey’s hear. She knew of the dagger for Bran’s throat. She knew of the trade he had forced Jeyne to learn. She knew of how he had used Sweetrobin shaking sickness against him. Deep down, the knowledge was part of her now forever.  
Her only protection had been the claim her maidenhead offered. The north, not a fistfull of coins. How it hadn’t protected her from much.   
  
“Maybe one day I’ll be ready.”, she whispered, “Thank you, my lord.” For once he did not snort at the name and after all, it was soothing telling him such things. Bran and Arya had no stomach for it, and pains of their own.  
They sat in silence, Sansa waiting for the disgust to wash off her mouth. Now that her blood had cooled, she couldn't believe what she had offered. How could she have asked him such a thing?  
  
She got up from beside him, smoothing her skirts so she wouldn’t have to meet his eyes. “I was wrong to ask you, please forgive me.”  
But as she arrived at the door, she heard him jump out of bed, grunt, and then she felt an iron clasp on her wrist.   
“Do you even understand what you ask of me?”, he rasped at her ear. She shivered all over.   
She turned to face him. He was naked indeed.   
“I do!”  
“You're blushing.”, he teased, “You'd have to get used to this, if you want to go through. And the lady doesn’t want to look.”  
 _“I don't_?”, she wondered, fixing a point on his chest.   
“Or is it the prestige of House Clegane that tempts you?”, he continued.   
She smiled. If he were to refuse her, it would be in anger, not with a jest.   
“Be honest, Sansa.”   
“What if I can't say it?”  
“I’m honest and I won't accept any less from you.”  
“I do not lie!”, she protested.   
“You can't even say it, woman. That's not any better.”  
  
Sansa thought back on what had kept her awake at night since she had said she'd forgiven him.  
  
“You said you'd protect me. And you left. And now you promise again.”  
“I will. I left once and I’m the first to curse my damn self for it, and you think you can punish me with marriage? You northerners have strange notions.”  
“But then you would _have_ to stay here.”  
“Listen to me. I will stay. If you marry or you don't. If you have children I'll guard them. But wed me to keep me over your covers when you sleep under them, that's below you.”  
“But you left once. Twice even!”  
“It's not leaving I curse. It's leaving _you_ to them. And I knew you were safe here once the fighting was done. You don't have to collar me to make me stay.”  
This was only half of what troubled Sansa.  
“Knowing how scared you are, and I know you are! Don't protest! Knowing this I wouldn't be any better than thrice blasted Littlefinger if I agreed.”  
“What harm is there if I ask? If I chose?”  
“Chose me? All you'll manage is to make enemies of your kin and have them doubt your judgement. And lest I forget! It’d keep you from a good match, when it comes.”   
“A good match? I had plenty in the past, don't you remember? A prince then a king, the hand of the King, a high lord. All they wanted from me was my claim, my head, my… my…”  
He knew what she meant. For once, he had the courtesy of not being blunt.  
“Nothing changed but me. Those men, even those northern lords, they would use me for their line and mine.”  
“They are your brother's men, good men, from what I can tell. What do you want if not them?”  
“A choice.”  
He considered her.  
“You wanted the boy once.”  
He was as stubborn as ever.   
“Before I knew what he was. But it's not the same. I know you. Better than you think.”   
“Not one bit, girl.”, he edged closer. “You'd make a mock of your vows?”  
“No!”  
She stumbled under the weight of realization. She wouldn't.   
“You came with the letter because you want a reason to be protected but all those who harmed you are dead and I killed none of them. You have far better choices at hand, don't doubt that.”, he rasped.   
  
Sansa knew how she wanted him, the unchivalrous urges his absence had drawn from the depth of her being. She had learned not to show her want, but it had been there, night after night as they talked, to soothe away the nightmares with a thought and the deftness of her hand.  
  
“I always thought you… you...”  
“Want you?”, he practically shouted, “Give me a seat before your door to guard you, you'd be less cruel!”  
Sansa’s thoughts couldn't form clearly in her mind. They were saying so much crude words, and he was still so utterly naked.  
“I’d rather see you wed another rather than sleep next to you and never touch you.”  
“ _Gods, he said it._ ”, Sansa thought, dizzy.  
“I'll let you sleep under my covers.”, she blurted.   
“Don't lie to me. Not about that.”  
“I would!”  
“You know what I mean.”  
  
He sounded defeated when he mumbled, “There are many _gallant_ lads who would agree before you're done talking. You don't want your children to be mine, or my name to be yours. Don't trap yourself. There's no old debt between us.”  
  
 _No, I do_ , Sansa thought and grabbed his arm and marched him to bed.  
“What are you doing?”, he barked in a voice that betrayed more than surprise.   
  
In the span of a few heartbeats, Sansa was curled on the bed between the warm stones of the castle and his naked body. He hadn't opposed to her pulling him on the bed, but she wouldn't speak, wouldn't answer his questions. She only laid within his reach but out of his arms.  
“ _This is nothing that can't be undone._ ”, she reasoned.  
  
She fought not to close her eyes. Not to run out. She couldn't kiss him just yet, though she wanted to. Her will was barely strong enough to keep looking at his chest, and not at the shape of his manhood that she knew was there, at the edge of her eyesight. How easy it would be to pull up her skirts and finally act.  
  
She had thought about the marriage bed. It only felt safe when it was him over her. Still now, he meant protection to her.  
Knowing he was in her life, the world stopped whirling painfully. Even if she still couldn't reconcile images of him, the protector, the tormentor, the man who took Arya, the man who saved Arya.   
That man would comfort Sansa after he menaced her. He had confided in her his most inner secret, unbidden, and regret, or fear, had pushed him to promise her death if she betrayed that secret she had never asked for.   
  
It was only years later, that she had looked beyond the words themselves and paid attention to what laid in between. Then she had came to understand just how close he had stumbled to an edge where killing and dying were but one. And becoming one of those who had harmed her had ended him.  
  
His raw strength and fierce rude honesty fought the distant cry of old nightmares. His wordless care made matters ever so much more simple. All that was left for her to fear was the dread of every dawn.  
  
There were scars down on his neck too, begging to be touched. Gods, she wanted to hide her face in his neck and pretend she knew nothing of the loss of time, who walked ever forward and would not stop for her to breath, to think, to chose.  
  
“You don't have to wed me for that. You're welcomed at all hours.”, he laughed in the last of the bravado he had. At that, Sansa crossed the space between them and put her ear to his chest. His heart drummed hard.  
  
How long they laid there, she couldn't guess. But when there was a knock on the door, her heart still fluttered and she realized she had cried all this time.  
  
“Whoever you are, you better stay outside if you know what’s good for you!”, Sandor barked. She pressed her hear a little closer to better it his voice resonating inside.  
Whoever it was departed in a hurry. If found in her master-at-arms’ bed, Sansa would never be respected again, they knew that bitter truth.   
  
“Did you thought about me when you were away?”, she asked.  
“Of course.”, he answered at once.   
She had nothing to answer. Though she searched for the right words. It was finally him who broke the silence.   
“You shouldn't have forgiven. You're still angry. I…”  
“Tell me what happened that night.”, she cut him, moving closer into the cold, “I want to know.”  
  
Sansa had not lied when saying she had forgiven. They had talked of much but not of this, one as much a coward as the other. They had left most of that night untouched, as if it were as fragile as the morning's frost and they were foolish enough to believe it would never change. But she needed to know why he had done this.  
  
“You know what happened enough as it is.”  
“No. Not to you. Please tell me.”  
“Why? It won't help your sleep get back to you, nor mine.”  
“Yes, it would.”, she lied, but her tone suffered no argument, not giving him the respite of looking away. _“Your turn. Look at me”_ , she urged without words, _“Take on what you did”.  
  
_ Defeated, he settled back and started his tale after a long silence.  
“When the battle began I was already drunk. I had been drunk for years, I didn't feel it. I lead sorties, killed, get back. I had nothing to think but where to wield. I killed everything my sword could reach and it was the easiest thing to me.”  
  
Sansa waited, unblinking, unmoving, for him to go on.  
“I knew what your husband had cooked for Stannis. Everybody knew. But not this much. Not this fast. They were burning us. Just as much as they burned the rest. When the bay exploded with wildfire, I nearly died there on my feet."  
Sansa held back her hand from reaching his, afraid he would stop talking.   
“Would you have refused to go if you had known?”  
“I don't know, probably I wouldn’t have. But when it scorched the horizon, I was there on the dais. The water exploded on us, thick with blood. There were bits of armor full of bodies flying past us. I wanted to bolt but I couldn't go. My men needed me and I couldn't care less for those buggers but I couldn't turn craven. Not after so long. So I stayed and hacked again. I drank twice as much and still felt none of it. The smoke was thick enough that I saw nothing, green smoke everywhere, all I could breath, but I felt the fire getting closer. I swear that damned wildfire was alive. I cut up any man who came near me. When the wine caught up with me, I ... All I heard was you telling me to fear the gods. It kept on ringing in my head. You spoke, and spoke again. “ _Some terrible hell_ ”, you said to me. And it was hell, finally like you promised me. I thought, what does the little bird knows of hell? Of true hell that takes all your screams and spit them back at you. When I couldn't hear anything else I just walked out of the battle, and who could have stopped me? Your husband tried though. Tried to shame me. Don't know why he went and bargained on my honor.” He scoffed bitterly. “But he lost.”  
  
He brushed her throat with the back of his fingers where the dagger had been. Sansa had not been touched so softly in years.  
  
“I never ran. I just wanted to be far and I saw the Keep, all red stones turned green now from where I was, but I just walked to it. It was so tall I thought the flames would never take it.”  
  
Sansa thought of all the wildfire the Red Keep had slept on top on, and shuddered.  
  
“So I started for your room. I almost fell from the bridge over the dry moat and plant myself on the spikes. I should have. But when I got up and you weren't there, I just dropped on your bed and waited for my thoughts to stop whirling.”  
  
His eyes, full of guilt, became empty and Sansa was frightened for him again.  
  
“Even on your bed I heard the wails, smelled the blood. It would not dry, not as long as I ran hot with fever and drank again. You were… I thought you ought to know what fear meant by now. And if you didn't, I was going to show you what it did.” He swallowed hard, and turned on his back. Outside the sun fell towards the horizon, dark grey clouds gathering.  
  
“The queen had Ilyn Payne waiting, for my head.”, Sansa whispered when he could not go on, “I wanted him to be you. I knew you would not hurt me. I thought… I thought you would not hurt me. When the battle was lost and she fled, I went to my chamber for safety but you…” Hot tears fell down her cheeks by then. “You were there.”, her voice barely spoke, “I thought you would kill me.”  
  
He did not utter another word for an hour, maybe two, his breath ragged and painful. The candle flickered out, revealing the dusk outside, spread across the sky like ink in water. Tears stained the pillow under both their heads. When he spoke again, his voice was a low dry whisper and the words sent fresh tears to her eyes.  
  
“The fire, it's more cunning than you'd know. It speaks loud and the wine silence the rest so when flames have screams, it’s all I can hear.”  
“I used to be afraid for you but then… the blood… I'm sorry…”  
‘Don't you dare!”, he gave a loud wounded beast growl that tied Sansa’s insides, “Don't _you_ dare apologise to me! I wanted you safe, I did! I thought you would look at me now that I came to save you. But everything scared you and me first! I thought it was better to kill you, rather than letting you live like this. Because I couldn't stay and no one would protect you after that night, no matter who won. I thought you would prefer the Stranger to Stannis’s soldiers taking you until you stopped begging. I never thought they would make you a Lannister.”  
“I prayed for you before the battle. When you left, I prayed again.”  
“Whatever gods you believe in must have heard you. When you sang to me, it stopped the screams, the flames.”, his voice was but a whisper through stones now, “When you sang then I saw what I was doing.”  
  
Sansa kept on sobbing. The warmth under the blanket would not force away the chill in her bones.    
  
“I'm sorry you suffered so. I'm sorry I couldn't help.”  
“It was never up to you. It shouldn't have been. I didn't ask for your forgiveness because you should never give it. Not to me.”  
  
And maybe Sansa hadn't forgiven after all, contrary thoughts swerved in her mind and none seemed right. The sting of betrayal pierced her. But his tears, true guilt, softened all the memory she had of that night.  
  
“I was not angry then.”, she hesitated, “I know you needed solace, but it was not something I could give. And you were too afraid to remember that. When you left I hid under your cloak. Again. And I kept it. But I wasn't bitter at what you did. I knew what the fire had done to you. I remembered you in the Eyrie, when he had me. I wondered where you were and what happened to you. I tried to forget what you did. But when Arya told me everything, I thought I should forgive. I thought I had to, now that you were dead. And maybe, no, I didn't forgive but I don't hate you! Still now I don't hate you. But… But now that you are there, and sorry, I feel the anger I never did. How could you do this?”  
  
What Sansa thought was anger swelled in her and pressed her closer into the stones of the wall. He laid so still, he might as well be dead for good.    
  
“But… I know what happened when you left. I know the good you did. I know you tortured yourself when you failed to protect me, and I never asked you to. Even if I wanted it. The gods know I wanted it. But you did fail. And now I do ask.” He turned to look at her, she could feel him in the darkness. “I would have lived in peace if you had stayed away but now it's too late. Stay and feel guilt if you must. But stay and protect me. Protect us.”  
  
Sansa knew what guilt did to old grief.  
  
“You're done with the harm you ever did me. More would end you. And I don't care what you say, you came here for my forgiveness too!”, it went all pouring out of her, “When dawn was at stake you went to fight here! Here! I won't let you crawl back to your own demise! I won't! You came here so that I could forgive you! Stay, and earn it!”


	3. Part 3

Bran asked, several times, if it truly was her wish, if it was not only gratitude she felt, and Gendry gave her a worried look when he learned. But they didn't oppose. There once was a time when the Lord of Winterfell could not have consented to such an union, but that time had came to a halt for the Starks. Politics and alliances had been of little consolation when the Others had invaded the land and high lords had perished just as easily as small folks had.   
  
When she gave her blessing, Arya’s smile had a wistful edge to it, but she squeezed her sister’s hand in both of hers. Sandor’s appearance had strained the balance between Arya and Sansa. In her fear at court, she had made an enemy of Arya to save herself from Cersei, and it stuck to her thoughts, her memory. Finding the truth in all that was hard work. And that light did not flatter her.  
  
It had taken months, but Arya had realized that Sandor was no longer the hollow darkness that she had traveled with, sodden in wine and self-hate.  
“They did bury the Hound after all.”, she said, her fingers caressing the hilt of her sword Needle that never left her hip. “You know he talked about you. But when we all thought he was dead, you never mentioned him. I thought you hated him.”  
  
Sansa had thought so sometimes.  
  
Sandor stayed so solemn that Arya called him a gargoyle and offered to find him a place on the castle's walls. He called her wildling and repeated her place was beyond the Wall, or it would have been if there had still been a Wall.  
“Gentle born, though not gentle one bit.”, he would reply.    
They mocked each other in a way that reminded Sansa of siblings. They even looked more alike than the sisters did.   
  
The rain battered hard against the shutters as she dressed for her wedding.  
“The gods, my lady.”, whispered her maid.   
“ _I’d worry if they gave us sunshine._ ”, Sansa thought.    
  
Before they walked to the tree, she told her betrothed Meera was with child. When she added that it didn't change her mind, he grew ominous again .  
“You'll regret it.”, he warned but there was no hardness on his features. He didn’t offer to free her of her word either.   
  
She remembered how the septon who had declared her untouched had croaked “You're innocent again.”, before she even climbed down from the table.  
“ _I was always a maid but I lost that innocence on the steps of Baelor_ ”, she had ached to snap at the man. “ _All that being a maid granted me was the value others gave me. I was always the same_.” Sansa abhorred owing gratitude to a little scrap of flesh she couldn't see, as if it held her value, and once gone it would leak out and be gone forever.   
“Some men would shun a bride branded by another.”, she had mused. Widowed, discarded or raped, it made no matter. All of it, words of her being too used by the Lannister to make any good northern alliance. There were many opposed to Sandor marrying her, and even some who made it known she should not wed again, ever.   
“Some would be afraid of what the gods would do.”  
“The gods?”, Sandor had sneered, “What gods? They can bloody well come here and drag me away from you themselves, if they care so much.”  
She smiled, living with men of faith hadn’t changed that in him.   
  
They had an agreement. “ _I will come to you._ ”, she told him, “ _In my time, I will.”_.  
  
They were to wed under low, gloomy and overcast skies, on a crisp autumn day on the cusp of darker, greyer ones. It rained for a while when they waited for the latecomers to join them. But the drizzle stopped by the time the small party set out for the godswood. When sunlight broke the clouds and the canopy, the woods glinted in the morning light, the musky smell of earth and pine trees all around them.  
When they walked, mud stained her skirts and the wind slid under the furs and sighed chilling warnings. Winter again soon. The woods, floored with reddening leaves, rustled with welcome as they advanced, her arm nestled in his elbow.   
  
Sandor did not follow the old gods, but he said the words just the same. He would not vow in vain.  
  
A kiss on the lips had been all she gave him when he fastened around her the cloak she had made for him. The few witnesses that were not family looked away uneasily, muttering that Eddard Stark, bones in his crypt at last, was still too close to escape this mummery. How used she must be, she heard, to be left to marry this wretched beast. What leverage must he have and how dutiful she was to obey. She who once was to be queen, now sold to a landless traitor dog.  
  
She was barren, for all they knew. Useless. She had been beaten by every last member of the Kingsguard, everybody knew that, and maybe one blow had made irreparable damage. Or maybe Littlefinger had fed her one too many potions to rid her womb of his spawn. Moontea was bound to make damage. They pitied her, really.  
  
There were no singers at their feast, though a few drunken attempts could be heard from the benches below. This was not how Sansa had imagined her wedding growing up. It was like listening to a song she knew, with other words than those she remembered. She liked it though, the stubborn scent of wilting flowers, the easiness, the intimacy of it. It was small affair, it had to be with so much of her family gone. Local lords had been invited as was tradition, but few lacked a good excuse to be absent, when almost all were present for the last harvest feast.  
  
During the feast, a man that Sansa did not know stumbled to his feet loudly and made a show of spitting on the ground. What he muttered Sansa could not hear but she thought she could read _grovel_ and _shame_ on his lips. The great hall became a cold buzzing place at once.  
Her new husband stood up and stared at the man, scowling, silent, until he sat back.  
  
That first night, Sandor looked at her long when she slipped in bed next to him. Outside the candlelight that surrounded them there was only darkness. He looked for fear, she knew, for a sign of regret, or perhaps for a sign of want. Nobody had dared ask for the bedding ceremony with such a somber groom. Sansa had learned long ago to read the features of the man she had chosen. But his heavy brow, the intense steel of his eyes, the hard set of his jaw, the large frame of his body, it all painted the image of a mindless brute, for whoever cared only for appearances.  
And truth be told, Sansa didn't mind not having the bedding. She would have welcomed it from friends, but she had no friends here even after years, almost no friends anywhere left alive, only family. She did not think she could ever trust anyone new in her life.   
“Can't say I never thought of sleeping here.”, Sandor said looking around and then tapped the sheet next to her, “Well, here.”  
She laughed and curled under the furs.   
“I meant what I said.”, she ventured, “When I'm ready.”  
“Trust me, when you're ready, I'll be long ready.”, he promised. Sansa blushed bright red, she hoped so.   
They talked and she did not know when she fell asleep but she woke in the night, startled when the bed moved suddenly. She realized it was only him, the husband she had chosen, turning in his sleep. Turning towards her.   
  
His long shape reached the far end of the carved bed they had been given. She bet she fitted perfectly close to him. There was an anchorage in seeing him in this foreign bedroom, a anchor that would become a constant. Soothing.  
His scars buried in the pillow, she marveled at his peacefulness.   
  
She wanted to look at him, truly and longly. The strings fading in his muscles, the length of his fingers, the curve of his calves. The mess of scars that faded in the neck into rough sun-kissed skin.  
  
She peeled the furs down and then the covers, slowly, keeping an eye on the steady rise and fall of his breathing. He had not bothered to dress for the night above the waist.  
Over the furrows on either side of his belly, pointing down like an arrow, laid curls of black hair where the crisscross of a hundred scars had spared them. One gash deeper than most of the other ran from the sharp bone of his collar to a finger length over the navel. 

And on its way it cut the outer ring of his nipple. Sansa saw herself descend on him and take it into her mouth, tasting and playing on her tongue the line that had parted his skin, her hands tugging his breeches down, advancing. Hovering above him like he was prey, her weight resting on one hand.   
She stopped, just shy of acting.   
If only he could sleep while she unlaced, uncovered, discovered. Maybe her boldness laid somewhere on his body. She wanted to climb on top of him, to get his full measure. She longed to stroke up his chest, to go from his throat up to his chin. And what to do next? Undress him perhaps, but he would wake, he would think her ready after all. Even if he would not object being undress, she had no doubt he would stop when she asked, but she would not leave him awake and disappointed.   
  
At that moment, as if he could read her mind, he rolled on his belly and her breath caught in her throat. On his back were larger, thicker muscles. “ _A bull_.”, she thought.  
There were also less scars. To survive all these years, he had rarely let his guard down, rarely turned his back on an enemy.  
  
Sansa covered him again and went back to sleep, in a different sort of torment than before.  
  


* * *

  
Like Gendry, Bran raised Sandor to a lordship so he could wed her, though Arya had not waited for any permission to wed.   
Sandor took the lone dog she had sewn for him as his sigil, though he refused to pick any words for his own house. He was granted the Hornwood’s lands, long forlorn, and its keep, though he set a castellan and only visited when duty required.   
From what Sansa could see, his small folks were grateful for his absence. Yet he wasn't hard on taxes, gave his remaining ear to complaints almost patiently. Without the Night’s Watch poachers were left to their Lords’ justice. He gave food and work to the poachers who did have starving children, and exile to those who pretended to, but did not.  
  
He would set off riding in his woods, taking the measure of his lands. He set carpenters to start repairs of the keep. He organised the harvest. He hired craftsmen and made them take apprentices amongst the young of his people who showed promise. If the land has no wealth of its own, he told her, best to have a craft to bargain with.  
  
She visited with him sometimes when he was called, knowing her presence eased his. On the five days ride to and from, she pondered on what different a journey it would have been if she had left King’s Landing with him when he had asked. She pictured them curled in dark caves, starving or wet to the bones with no shelter but soaked cloaks, his bright slashing anger and her ever present crushing apathy. Both terrified. And no protection from each other.  
  
She tried to imagine settling on his lands for good, but couldn't. Halfway between White Arbor and the Dreadfort, the castle was a dreary sight. When she visited, she felt at her back the tower where Donella Hornwood was locked away to starve. Men who had known her claimed that in the weeks after each harvest feasts, her ghost stared out over the courtyard, pale as snow and blood dripping from her mouth.  
House Hornwood's house words had been " _Righteous in wrath_ ", and he might not have been able, or willing, to keep those words, but Sansa found them fitting for Sandor.   
Her own folks still called him _unworthy_ , _turncloak_ , _Lannister_ and when they used _dog, or lord dog_ to talk about him, they gave the word all the scowl in the north.   
Yet his wife was not ready to leave Winterfell and may never be, and he would stay with her, he had sworn.   
The word was she had married him not to be sold again. And it was true, if not the whole truth. He was so coarse, her own people said. So gruff. And the things he had done. They thought he had forced her hand in marriage with his knowledge of Joffrey’s abuse. They praised his skills with a blade but many kept their distances from Joffrey’s old dog, not that he seemed to care. But the attitudes he gave himself had never meant much when it came to Sandor Clegane.   
  
They didn't know if they ought to call her Lady Clegane ou him Lord Stark. They wondered why the Stark siblings would marry so low beneath them. Even if Meera was of the Reeds, Gendry had been a knight before he became a lord. He was of what had once been royal blood, if still a bastard. The folks loved him well, but he would darken when called “My lord” and often couldn't be bothered to leave the forge long enough to be lordly. Everybody knew Arya ruled their lands.  
Arya had joked that Sansa would have married just about anyone to throw her own children down the line of succession. Sansa had been deeply distressed by the notion, failing to see the quip her sister was making. A quip worthy of the mischief her little sister always had for her when they were children.   
At long last, House Stark didn't lack for heirs.   
  
There were fewer letters from Tyrion after her wedding, and the ones she received were less curious and more perfunctory. He had not learned the name of her husband from her, but the Queen’s hand knew all the same. Whoever his spies in Winterfell were, they hid no details. And seven hells, it was no secret.  
Tyrion might believe she had their marriage annulled for Sandor, and not for her. He probably did. If he resented her for her choice, she did not care.  
Tyrion asked, once, if she wanted a way out of her union with the “Hound”. Furious, she burned the letter in the small hearth of her bedroom and told him never to ask that again or he'd lose her friendship. The Hound had died.   
Yet she did not blame him. Tyrion remembered the worst about Sandor, as Sandor did about the last Lannister. Jealousy and hatred and secrets and their places in the world and in the order of things, everything was a sharp sword between them. Hate was an easy conclusion to both of them. She often thought about the differences between her first and last husband, but there were more commons points that either one would admit.  
  
She knew her own people looked for bruises ever since she wed but only saw smiles. Timid smiles to be sure, but not unhappy ones.  
Since the wedding, Sandor and her shared a bed, but true to their words, there was no bedding, no kissing. They slept together, even if sleep was all they did.    
  
They had little, precious touch him and her. His hand on the small of her back reaching for her spine, her fingers curling on his forearm when she talked to him, her hair slithering for him in the wide bed they shared. His weight bending the bed was no touch but it felt like it. It was a pull and a petty ache and it suffered no rest.  
Touch was always slow, deliberate, it always made her heart heavy, made knots of her belly, made his mouth twitch a little.   
  
A soldier for most of his life, he was used to steal sleep on the saddle or on the camp ground’s frozen earth. An army on the march never rested and hundreds of men whoring their last hours of life were hardly a lullaby. So a little wife stirring under the covers would not always wake him.  
When sleep took him, his carefully composed stature crumbled. The tension left him slowly and that's how she would find him when nightmares would push her awake. She would look at him then, at the outline of him in the near complete darkness. Gentle sleet tapped away the hours on the shutters and she stared.   
He was keeping his promise after all and she wanted to keep hers.   
  
But some nights, it was his fears that were alive and loud. He would thrash in his sleep and start awake with a jerk, sweat beading and the covers snaking around his legs. He missed the wine more than ever then.  
Sandor dreamt of those first years in Casterly Rock when he would learn that Gregor was _here_ to see Lord Tywin. Close, and without augur from the Rock’s kennels to read beforehand. Sandor was not tall enough yet then, not strong enough, not desperate enough.    
When it was not of his cursed brother, his dreams were of the sweetness of Joff as a babe, of his upturned expecting face and his many questions. He dreamt of him before he started thinking on his own. He dreamt of watching her walk out the courtroom swathed in his own white cloak, at Tyrion’s arm. He dreamt of the speed with which a mob could close on someone who never learned to hack a body in two. Those dreams showed little and told much.   
The dread in those dreams was like the iron of blood in the air and heavy like it had been dropped on him from high altitudes. From the top of the Eyrie, picking up weight on the way down and turning him into a prey. He who had crafted himself a menace did not know how to be vulnerable. Or safe.  


“He is dead. He is not coming back.”, she tried to soothe him on one of such nights, stroking the hair out of his eyes so that he would see her.  
The bitter laugh he barked iced her.   
“He is, little bird, I know. But sometimes I forget. Even if I know better.”   
He slumped back down.   
“But I've been told before that he would not come back. And it's my father that I never saw again.”  
Sansa laid down beside him, closer than she usually did in the bed, her head on his shoulder. She held his forearm, his hand being too far to reach. He tensed at her touch, the sweat slowly turning cold on his skin.   
“Father planned with his men for weeks, waiting for the perfect dreary morning to take Gregor on a hunt. Four to one, he told me, craven odds for a kinslaying but he'd kill us all if we let him.”  
He made a fist around the fabric of her sleeping dress. He was shaking, “To be a good lord, he said.”  
“A good father. For once.”  
He smiled at that, despite the skin around his mouth twitching, like a man who had never suffered any great devastating wrong and something fluttered in her belly.  
“You don't know the half of it.”, he muttered and she was about to ask what he meant when he added, “He waited too long for it to succeed. Gregor was already huge. He snapped them like twigs, you can believe that.”   
  
He had been alone in the world since he was a boy, and even a man grown now, safe at last, she would always fear for him.  
  
After a few weeks, she sat in his arms in her solar, to read while he breathed in the perfumes in her hair. A few feet away, his dog smelled under the door for Shaggydog to appear. He was terrified of the direwolf.  
The next evenings she did it again and true to his word, he would not press her, hard as the felt him against her backside. He only fiddled with the trimmings of her dress and fell asleep.  
Long after she was done reading, she would look at him and wonder how a man that was still fiercely feared in all the land could snore like a sleep deprived child, defenseless and _puppylike_.   
  
Almost half a year passed this way, and one morning as he dressed Sansa found herself spellbound by the many scars of his chest. They were a shiny white as they caught the rising light and seemed almost _delicate_. They wrote the history of his battles and Sansa wanted to touch him so badly.  
She had her own scars, two cracks on her lips, long thin ones on the back of her thighs, a small crescent on her scalp that her hair hid, and a grotesque gash on each wrists that Lord Petyr’s manacles had given her. Because she had been adamant in her defiance.   
She had found again the strength to oppose his proposed match. Conjuring the steel in her that had tumbled through the moondoor with her aunt when she arrived in this forsaken place. Her would be father had not cared for her refusal once he realized she did not mean to have him as a lover, instead of Harry. She had dared to look away but would not look down, and it fit none of his plans.   
She told Sandor of lord Baelish’s wiles, little by little, of his ever daring hands who pushed her to his knees. When other men would have called her an accomplice of Littlefinger and his pushing of her boundaries, her husband never accused her.   
  
Sandor recounted all the fights he remembered, laughed that he could invent stories for the ones he had forgotten, if she could forgive the lie.  
He looked warm, that victorious and surviving other Warrior, she thought, her hands almost reaching for him.   
With his long black hair, hooked nose and a frame so large some doors were too small to let him through without turning, he looked nothing like Ser Loras had and there was nothing in any kingdoms she would ever trade him for.  
He was no longer master-at-arms, but often joined practice and still taught what he could. He was softer around the waist, now that he trained less fervently. But Sansa saw his muscles, hard and woven around each other, the thick black hair that covered him, and she thought that one day she would love touching it all.   
  
In the short winter that followed, one that lasted less than half a dozen moons, he would dress in layers of wool and furs, cursing the cold outside of the castle.  
On those long evenings, she wove direwolves and dogs out of thread, sitting on his lap, aching yet still unable to place his hands on the sweet flesh nestled between her legs that pulsed with longing. If she pricked her finger, he brought it to his mouth and sucked, her resolve melting like her blood did. Measuring him in details for the garments she made him did nothing to ease her turmoil.   
  
The winters he had known in the westerlands were much kinder, to his sullen observations.  
“Too much snow.”, he grumbled when his thigh hurt, peering out their bedchamber’s window, “It's worse still when it's hot inside. Everytime I leave, the cold slaps me awake. Why would anyone settle so far north but bloody wildlings?”  
  
Outside in the distant woods, loud cracks echoed in the morning silence as the cold progressed between the trees. Inside the gates, the castle rose from lazy slumber, reluctant.  
  
More often than not, snows threatened to bury the gates shut, winds howling and breaking on Winterfell. Roads disappeared behind a thick blanket and her sister Arya and her family would be stranded in their own castle, as on an island of stones.  
  
Those long sunless weeks, Sansa practiced the high harp again, with no more talent than before, relishing his hands around her waist and the knowledge of what they could do together when she could gather the audacity.  
  
Once, on the ride back from his lands, riding ahead of their escorts, she asked him why he wasn't harder on his people. He had dealt with a poacher, and had given the lad work and food, rather than exile.  
“Would you rather I were cruel?”, he teased her. “Being lenient doesn't cost me much time and I don't need much gold. And I won't kill a man that only want to keep from starving. Seven hells, I did my fair share of poaching in the riverlands, and more. Besides, I'll have better taxes if they manage to make better harvests, not the other way around.”  
They rode on for a while and he scoffed, “My castellan better stop asking me to take his son for a _squire_ though. I'm not that patient.”  
After a moment of solemn silence, he added, “If you had grown up in Gregor’s shadow you’d know why I won't be harder than I am. Clegane’s keep was a sour place. I left at ten, and never missed it.”  
“You never went back?”, she asked.  
“What for?”, he shrugged.   
“Gregor died, it would be yours.”  
“The Others take it.”. He laughed when he realized what he had said. She chuckled.   
“Tywin Lannister no doubt gave bestowed it to better dogs. I wouldn't want it.”  
“How was it?”, she asked anxiously. They had an unspoken habit of bringing up the harm done to them little by little. To cleanse it. Alive, Gregor had cast a shadow so large, in death it still reached his younger brother.   
  
“Just a tower house. Always wet. Gregor kept the place silent, couldn't stand the noise sometimes. Servants went missing one day, never mentioned again. Girls from the villages too. Those he hid. And barely. He didn't trouble himself over cattle though. My father silenced what he could. But it was no good. Not every father can be bought with gold when he found his daughter dead himself. Didn't have enough gold for those who would be bought either.”  
Only the Lannisters had sufficient gold to foster such a monster, she mused.   
  
“What about your mother? Did she had lands of her own? What was her name? You never told me.”  
He hesitated.   
“I don't remember, truth be told.”  
And no one left to ask, Sansa reflected, saddened. She made a note to ask Maester Tarly if he could inquire after it.   
“No”, Sandor added after a pause, “This is all the land I have. And my sons after me.”, he cast a glance her way, “If you give me sons.”  
“Or daughters.”, she replied.  
“Or daughters.”, he agreed. “And I don't want them to be ashamed of what they are left with. My name is enough as it is. And the poor bastards who won me for a lord didn't deserve me, any more than Gendry’s folks. The Boltons didn't have a flayed man on their breast for the look of it. There’s not a thicket free of graves. That's not the treasure I want, believe me. Last floods burst open shallow graves and scattered bones to every riverbed. My moats are stuffed with remains and it stinks to the seventh hell. In places like this, the land is different, like it knows it's cursed. Here.”, he gestured at the woods that surrounded them, “It's mine now. It has had enough of war, and so do my folks and so do I. I won't add to it.”  
“Winterfell...”, she hesitated, “When it burned, the stones stood. But it's the Boltons who built the inside out of the rumbles. When I arrived with Brienne, I couldn't find my way around even if they rebuilt the same.”  
She had never dared tell anybody of the vicious fever dreams that haunted her nights when she reached home at last.   
“I almost want to see ghosts sometimes. It would be sweet, seeing them again. But I grew up here. I have such good memories of the home I had. Whatever the castle is now, I still have that.”  
He grunted his approval, deep in thoughts.   
“Didn't realize until Robert brought us here how different the north was. The Kingslayer wouldn't shut up about how bleak it was.”  
“You didn't agree?”  
“It lacked colors. Still does. But I wouldn’t have minded being your father’s man. Even now the household doesn't whimper when they're spoken to. Well, some do, but it's my fault, not theirs. But there isn't death at every corner. Your brother may be young, and too trusting by half, but he's no fool. And he's just. I would have paid good gold to see Tywin Lannister take a different bugger every night to dine with, washer women or cooks.”  
“Father did too.”  
“Honorable Ned Stark”, her husband mused wryly, “I should have known.”  
Sandor dismounted to lead Stranger around a tangle of roots. The horse had been past his prime for many years now, but her husband refused to change his mount.   
It was queer, towering over him for once.   
“It's not your castle you loved so much, it's the folks you grew up with.”, he stated.   
“No”, she replied, “I love it too.”   
It was not an easy love she bore Winterfell, but one that endured everything. They rode on silently for a few miles.  
“You never asked me if we should live on your lands now. Together.”, she asked.   
“You’d want that?”  
“I don't know. I don't think so.”, she admitted.   
“They'll still be there if you change your mind. You don't think of Winterfell as your home then?”, he asked.  
“I do. But sometimes I think it's me I don't recognise.”  
“I didn't recognise you either, when I arrived there. Not at first.”  
“You didn't?”, she asked, startled.   
“I knew who you were soon enough, when you started to get scared. And your hair, I’d recognize everywhere. But seating on the dais, well you've always been a _lady_ , but with that baby on your lap, you looked happy. Happier.”  
“I _am_ happy.”. She knew where he was going with this.   
“Would you even tell if you weren't?”  
“Yes!”, she snapped angrily, “You always want me to say I regret choosing you, don't you? I don't! And I think your folks are starting to like you. How you must hate that!”   
He scoffed. “My folks? Maybe. But not yours. They still think I forced your hand.”  
  
It was true, but she was too angry to admit it. It was the first time they quarreled and for such stupid reasons. She glanced behind, their men were too far to hear the words but they would know something was amiss just by looking at them.  
  
“I asked you! And you still think _you_ forced my hand!”, she argued.  
“I said yes and you're still no closer to see me as your husband.”  
This was the heart of it, she realized.   
“You may say you don't regret, Sansa, but it's not what you say at night. You moan all the things you want done to you when you sleep. Some nights I think you might decide to ride me so hard I’d forget my own name but you never touch me. And come morning it’s poise again I get from you and “ _my lords_ ”.”  
He urged his horse forward but her mare was younger and of surer footing than old Stranger.   
“You still do it, you know.”, she said when she caught up.   
“Do what?”, he asked, brooding.  
“Give me words I never said and intentions I never had. I am not angry!”, she added before he could reply, “I just wished you trusted me too.”  
  


* * *

  
Another morning, some ten or eleven moons after they had wed, she passed him in the corridor carrying a boy injured in practice. “It's a clean break.”, he told the bailing boy, “It shouldn't heal badly.”  
She watched him put down the boy cautiously on Maester Tarly’s table and pulled him outside for a kiss. She had been whispering to herself to kiss him for weeks now, just kiss him and damn the consequences. She did want him so badly.   
She prodded for the swell of his lips, for the shape of his jaw, his shadow of a beard, feeling for the bone so close under the skin where stubble faded into scars. When she reached his neck and the scars that were there too, the flecks of snow on his shoulders melted on her cheek. His breath started to grow short but he never pushed her away for fresh air. And when they finally parted, she herself was not quite panting but breathless.   
“Careful Sansa.”, he said in a pained and playful whisper, grabbing her arms to keep her close, “First you find yourself sharing a bed with your husband, and now you're kissing him. You’re warming his blood.”  
“That's a much better kiss than the first.”, she mused.  
“That's cruel of you to speak of another to your latest husband, don't you think?”  
“No, I'm talking of you.”, she swatted his chest, “The night of the Blackwater.”, she added in a whisper.   
All humor dropped from his features.   
“Kissed you? I never kissed you. Not before I made you my wife.”  
But there was doubt in his voice, as if he wondered if he had forgotten. His own loathing glowed green in his memories.   
Sansa drew back, “You did. I remember! After I sung!”   
Or was it before?  
“Trust me, I remember that night, I wish I didn’t.” His scars twitched. “I never kissed you.”, he replied, surer now.  
  
She searched her memories, abashed, a dark painful pink on her cheeks. Now she wasn't so sure she had kissed him that night.  
He did not mock her, he did not growl, he only asked, with sadness in his voice that tore her heart a little, “Is this why you wed me, Sansa?”  
This made her cry, right in the corridor. But looking at her husband, somber as he was, she realized what her tears were, fear that came creeping up from past abuse of Joffrey and Littlefinger. It was finally waking up from that long nightmare.   
That kiss, however untrue it had been, had been her shield. She had curled under it when all she had left of her last protector was a soiled cloak and the memory of his dagger.   
  
That kiss had kept her sane when she had been wed without her consent, when Littlefinger found ways of having her without leaving marks, when Harry had asked for his husband’s rights without the septons’ words, when the snows almost buried her and Brienne.  
  
She had decided that kiss that had never happened. She told him so and something in her made him believe this was no lie.  
“I’d wed you again.”, she said. She wanted his embrace with a force she barely understood. This quiet, shameful, hated, formidable beast of a husband.   
  
That same afternoon, he left to ride on his own land, alone, pretexting that he should act the lord from time to time, lest his folks might forget his face. Sansa let him go reluctantly. She understood and busied herself with work with her brother until she stumbled to her bed. A lonely bed was worst than she could have imagined.  
  
Upon his return, a couple of days later, she kissed him again as soon as he entered the bedchamber. Maidenly but just as sincere, devoured by the worry not feeling him caused her. His hand crawled around the back of her head to keep her against him. Trapping her in a kiss she wished never to escape.  
They stumbled to the bed, his good leg pushing to part hers, the pommel of his sword digging in her belly, his great weight pushing them down, down to a tangle of iron grip and fingers pushing her long skirts up. His body enveloping hers completely.   
  
His eyes glowed with the same longing he had when she dismissed her maid and undressed alone, shedding layers of elaborate gown. She would glance up at the silence, and find he had stopped writing and was peeking, perfectly immobile, a perfect reflection of the shadow he played in the bowels of the Red Keep.  
  
But now her lips touching the ruins around his eye unraveled his hold. Panting, she left the room, more confused and determined than ever.  
  
When the gentle warmth of spring returned, he started sleeping naked. It would be soon now and he felt it too. He tormented her, gladly, in small but devastating ways. She did not feel, no, but she saw his hardness in the first lights of the morning. “Long ready”, she remembered.  
  
After much rehearsing, she managed to ask him to open the back of her dresses, row of laces threaded to look like an arrow pointing down. He worked with painful slowness. Once he was done, he moved on to her smallclothes and when her back was bare, she stood rooted to that spot. Sandor turned locks of her hair to the candlelight and maybe he forgot he was still awake, but he kissed her neck, stubble grazing her skin. The feeling so foreign, so gentle, traveled through her like a lightning bolt through a tree. He did not mistake her shivers for disgust.  
  
For weeks now, Sansa had tried coaxing herself to ask for his arms in the night, then to shed her own sleeping clothes.  
  
That same spring night, as she woke startled by a sudden storm in the night, lightning slashing the purple skies, she had nestled in his arms, not afraid one bit. Such risks were easier with the cover of night, she had surmised.  
His chest was warm, and she had fallen back into sleep, tracing the scars he had won pulling her out of the riot, his body mapped in her mind.   
  
After that started a fall down into touch. He was warm, warmer that she had imagined when they melted together. The smell of leather on him and the sweet sweat on his brow, she hadn’t expected. The wet gentleness of his mouth dissolved her fears.  
  
It was when autumn came again, just as the leaves rimmed with shades of yellow and orange, that they slept as husband and wife in truth.  
Duty was not the sullen discomfort she had been told to expect, to say the least. The restlessness between her legs only quieted when properly satisfied, to wake again quickly, hungry and flushed, and he obliged her every moans.   
  
Writhing in the leaves of the godswood and its scalding pools, across their great bed, feeling cleaner, purer than she was, covered in sweat and open. The purpose of that want left her less clueless than the sheer hunger it sparked.  
  
He kissed her longly, from her neck to her wrists, pausing to revere the button of nerves that completely unraveled her with worshiping thoroughness, his beard scratching the tender flesh on the inside of her thighs.  
He held her tight when his fears bubbled back to the surface, shadows red and green searching to drag him down and under.  
His eyes always searched for hers when he sheathed into her, grey and wet like storm skies were, with no trace of their anger. And most of all, what made her lose all her sense was how he rasped her name deep in the night, deep inside her.   
  
When she sung under his weight, straddling him, and asked for more of him, he called her _eager_ in between his own desperate moans. _Happy_ , she called herself. 


	4. Part 4

The men had came to her in secret, as she was playing with Meera’s baby in the glass garden. They said the way she wandered the castle, the exhaustion in her eyes made them worry the beast she had wed was slowly killing her.  
  
“Give us the order my lady, we beg of you. Let us rid you of him.”, they pleaded. The three of them looked so worried for her, Sansa remembered her time in King’s Landing and how no one had came to her help.  
Almost no one.  
  
Yet if what they were offering was horrifying, that misplaced loyalty was not a matter for the sword to settle.  
She couldn't find it in her to be crossed, terrified, yes, but not crossed. Even after all the harm that had been done to her, she was still meek.  
  
“For your father and lady mother. They would protect you had the Lannister and coward Freys not murdered them.”  
The names brought her back to her senses. She clutched baby Eddard close to her chest.  
“I wished you remembered that Lord Clegane chose to come here to fight.”, she blurted when she found her voice, “He fought the Others, like you did. We would have held without him, I’m sure, waiting for the crows to bring the dragon to us. But ask yourself how many more would have died if he had not chosen to fight for us.”  
“My lady! He's the butcher of the Saltpans, we know he is!”  
“He is not! Or do you call my brother, _your lord_ , a liar? Do you call the Lady Brienne a liar too?”  
  
Her name had a great reach, even now.  
Sansa recognised one of the man as one of those who had caught rats when the food had grown scarce. And looking at one other man, the memory of stitching a great gash on his chest flashed before her eyes.  
They could not meet her gaze, this was taking a turn they had not anticipated.  
  
“He was a Lannister man, that is true enough. He served the lords that ruled the land he was born on. As you do. He served when he had to, not by choice, as you were Boltons once. Or maybe you chose to forget that. But he broke free of them. You might not like him, and the gods know he’s not one for charm but you owe him respect. No matter if I look pale or not!”  
  
One man’s jaw dropped open a bit and none of the three would speak. She clasped her hands tighter around the baby, afraid the men would see them shake.  
  
“He is not his brother, either. If she could speak of it, Lady Arya could tell you tales of Gregor Clegane’s deeds in Harrenhall and you would sleep even less than she can. Or the Lady Brienne, she knows too what the Mountain did everywhere he went. Or what the man who donned my husband’s helm did in Saltpans. Those were monsters worthy of your loathing.”  
She felt herself become more confident. In her arms, the baby writhed softly in his sleep.  
“But my husband, a beast? What has he done here to warrant such hatred? What has he done that you know for yourself and not been told? It is his name that is vile, not him. Show me anyone who's never done harm, I dare you. I myself, I've done wrong too, though I did not meant harm. I've done wrong and it cost me dearly. You, Desmond, your own father was caught thieving and sent to the Wall, are you guilty of his crime?”  
Startled to be singled out, the man seemed to be choking on his tongue.  
“You, Wyman,” she continued without waiting for an answer, “Your brother smothered his own baby, when the lack of sleep drove him mad, if I recall. This isn't your crime, any more than what the Mountain did.”  
She turned to the last man, “I must admit I don't know who you are, what is your name?”  
“M… my...”, he stammered.  
“Your name.”, she demanded.  
“Alyn.... my lady…”  
“Alyn, there are surely some things your cousin or nephew or mother or else has done, would you take their blame? Do not misunderstand me, I know why you three make this treacherous offer. I know who my husband was, and better than you. But he wouldn't hurt me, he would die first. If it can put your minds at ease and stop this madness, then you must understand.”  
  
The men were about to protest, but she added, “Do not worry, I'll remember your kindness. As I’ll remember your names and faces. Should any harm befall my husband, I'll know who to address my sorrow to.”  
They were ashamed, it was plain to see. _Good_ , she thought.  
“Leave now before I call the guard, or worse, my husband so I can ask him what he thinks of this!”  
  
Sansa knew it was harsh, but when she had grown, she had grown out of ever pleasing the undeserving.  
However misguided they were, her people loved her.  
She loved them too. With their flaws and stubbornness and bravery. She loved them all.  
She often glimpsed signs of her handiwork behind half opened tunics, what remained when her embroideries had scarred over, and the threads of silks of many colors had been pulled out. Horrid scars on living men were worth the nightmares.  
She didn't know how long it had taken them to muster their courage, nor how many were involved, but she hoped they’d be cowards in that matter in the future. Plotting to stab him in the back was likely their darkest prowess. But it was little comfort, sometimes cowards succeeded.  
  
If Sansa grew paler and frailer as of yet it was because, two dozen moon turns after her wedding, at eight and twenty, she was with child for the first time. And the old Queen had had the right of it, so far there was little magic involved.    
A few times before she had thought his seed had taken root in her, only for blood to wash away the promise of children.  
But now she was sure. Her stomach turned back up the food she ate every morning. Smells that were comforting before would twist her insides. And she couldn't sleep much, no matter how consumed she felt.  
And if she hadn't told him yet, she certainly wouldn't tell them.  
  
Sansa had been thinking about the baby in her as she sat in the glass gardens, braiding a crown of early blooming winter roses for Arya’s eldest, like Bran had seen their grandmother Lyarra make. Maybe the baby would be a girl. She would wait another turn of the moon to tell Sandor, if he didn't notice before.  
  
She had taken Bran’s baby from his wet nurse, to get an idea of what it felt like. She stroked the fine hair on his head, tracing the curve of his little nose, his plump arms. His skin was so soft, so clean. She detailed the shape of him as he laid on her lap, crying gently in his deep baby dreams. He was barely three months old and living seemed exhausting at that age.  
Were there clues of the grown man in that little baby's face? Would he be strong, stubborn or merry?  
She stroked the bump on her belly that wasn't there.  
Meera’s delivery had been easy, but nothing guaranteed hers would be.  
Arya had travels planned, and decided two children were enough for now. She filled her castle with orphans she found everywhere and declared herself busy enough with the lot of them. But Sansa also knew the birthing bed had hurt Arya savagely.  
  
The threat against Sandor was real and terrifying, worse, it had been here all along and she had been oblivious.  
This was a concern Sansa had had many times, staring a the slow-growing pile of his belongings. His ornamented sword belt, a wedding gift. A whetstone. The sets of clothes that she tried to expand every chance she got.  
The sadness of it. Only a fighter's possessions. Not a man’s with a place he belonged to. Not a husband’s.  
He did try to fit in, and she loved him for it all the more, but he never made friends, and despised the frauds who only tried after he married her. Even with new lords, new loyalties, new customs, the new order of things took pains to keep him apart. The castle was like an anthill, set on having certain things in a certain order, in a well practiced rhythm. And the _dog_ was never welcomed, only tolerated.  
One thing that never changed was the glowers, the whispers, the bone-deep distrust.    
  
Sandor’s solemness and her own armor of courtesy brought confusion she hadn't care to dispel, but she saw now she would have to act, lest she would find herself short of a husband. She went to him at once, sick with worry. She found him in the yard, along with Meera and the master-at-arms, almost done with training of Winterfell’s household guard. They made a curious pair her husband and good sister, but they worked well together.  
He watched her approach surprised, bare from the waist up, still hot from the effort despite the chill, sun-kissed and sleek with sweat.  
  
Sansa gave little Eddard back to his mother and threw her arms around her husband, the braid still in her hand. He held her with one arm, his nose in the crown of her hair, resting on his sword as he stilled his breath. Her hand curled around his belt and pulled him closer. Around them the yard was silent.  
  
“What is there?”, he asked softly, after dismissing the spectators with a glare. She usually remained ladylike where her folks could see her.  
“Some men came to me. They asked for my permission to kill you.” She saw no sense in dulling the blow, he always welcomed the truth.  
“Again?”, he growled, “It's an obsession with you northerners.”  
She did not understand.  
“Your brother.”, he explained, “Told me he gets that request three or four times a year. Not in so many words but that's the same honor they trip over each other to get. I didn't think they’d get straight to you.”  
She was speechless.  
“The day we were wed, four buggers fell on me in the stables. They’d have me taste their swords if I let them. I may be lame but I’m not slow.”, he laughed.  
He kept his sword sharp.  
“Is this why you were so silent that day?”  
“I was silent because I still thought you were going to wake and see it's me you were taking for a husband.”  
“Doesn't this worry you?”, she asked in disbelief.  
“I’d worry if you had tell them yes. You didn't, didn't you?” He cupped her cheek and kissed her. “There's been a price on my head for longer than I care to remember. I don't like it but it's no surprise, you can trust that.”  
She had not realized he lived with a menace over him.  
“I'm sorry, my lord.”  
“What did I tell you about your sorries?”, he sheathed his sword and grabbed her by the waist, “Or your ‘my lords’? I knew I wouldn't get a blessing when I married you. They were fine enough with me serving here, but I'm too low born to be your kin. They don't like being told what to do by a turncloak. And they know this as much as I do.”  
“You should have told me.”  
He shrugged. He would never admit wanting to be wanted.  
On the outer circle of the yard, his dog waited impatiently to be called, wiping a wide circle in the dirt with its tail.  
“Little bird, don't mistake the things I don't do in fear of going too far in my anger, for thoughts I don't have. If I give credit to them the way I always did before, and trust me I don't know any better way, then they’d be assured they are right to want me dead.”  
“Sandor…”  
“I know. Let them talk. It's done and I can't say I regret it.” He kissed her neck, holding her closer yet. She eased herself in his grasp, forgetting the remaining onlookers who eyed them from where they sit.  
“I’d sooner have them busy plotting my murder than taking their grievances against you.”  
“I don't!”, she pushed back, “My men are trying to kill you for my own benefit and I’m the last to know!”  
“So they asked you, good for them. What did you tell them?”  
“That I would give them my grief in person if anything happened to you.”  
He smirked.  
“Maybe they’re not wrong after all”, he said cupping her cheek, “I should give you more colors. You look dreadful, little bird. Is it the babe troubling you?”  
“You know?”, she asked, astonished.  
“I know now.”  
She ought to have known. As quiet as he was now, he saw much more than he let on.  
“Are you happy?”, she asked.  
“Are you? They seem to think you're not.”  
“My lord...”, she warned.  
“Fine.”, he sighed. “I didn't think I'll wed, much less have children. But I knew it would come, if you could find it in you to let me be your husband at night.”  
She blushed and at her feet Sandor’s dog, who had tired of obedience, picked up the crown of flowers she had dropped and ran away with it firmly in its jaw.  
“And in the day too.”, he let her hair flow between his fingers. “Thought that would have happened by now.”  
Sansa could have sworn he had been waiting.  
“Once it shows, people will know I've been with you.”, he rasped and then sighed, “Maybe now they’ll know you don't spend your nights warding me off with a hot poker and stop pestering me.”  
The thought of people talking of what happened behind her closed door unsettled her.  
He sighed with frustration, “Or maybe they'll rush to make you a widow.”  
She smiled. “You know I don't regret wedding you. And I am not in a hurry to be a widow.”  
“You might change your mind after you birth my child.”  
“Only if it grows as big as you before I bring him forth.”  
He laughed. She didn't seem to grow tired of it, rare as it was.  
  
In those moments, Sansa pondered on the bravery of women who chose the lovers they wanted, for all to see, and she knew she was lucky he was hers, because she would have never dared seduce him if their union was not lawful. What could have never been, that surety never left her, always plagued her anxiousness, even now that they were wed. But when he knelt before her, even her most worried thoughts melted in his tongue. His daring, deft, beloved tongue.  
  
Maester Tarly had searched at her request. But Sandor’s mother being of no notable house, the ledger the maester had used to track down his ancestry had not seen useful to include her name. Wives were little more than breeding mares to men who put history to paper. Though, it mentioned a sister, and when the time was right, Sansa intended on asking her husband about this little sister he had never talked about.  
  
Sansa had only been seven when her own mother had been carrying Rickon, too young to remember. And Arya’s pregnancies had been especially difficult. On the brink of starvation since she was only nine, her health stayed delicate, no matter how much she could endure. She always eat too much or not enough, and rarely slept a full night.  
  
Winterfell’s maester, Samwell Tarly, had turned as white as snow when Sansa had asked him to confirm she was with child. It didn't help that her maester was so scared of Sandor, he always stammered in his presence. He knew of birthing. He had assisted Meera during the delivery. Since then he argued with newfound passion to find a good midwife to settle in Winterfell and take apprentice.  
  
Sansa wished old Nan was still there.  
  
Her husband looked at her belly, though it was too soon to swell.  
“They'll know you can have children. Unlike what your brother said.”  
“Bran never lied.” He had only pointed out that, though married, she never conceived. Sandor scoffed.  
“Close enough. They won't like it.”  
“They already want you dead. What more could they want?”  
“Have your child declared a bastard and wed you again. But wisely this time.”  
She clutched him harder. At least he was not arguing that a third husband could only be an improvement.  
“Your brother better start praying the baby has more of your blood than mine.”, he muttered. Sansa nuzzled her nose in the crook of her husband’s neck, this would be another battle. His house had been founded on a brave deed rewarded but now Sandor was ashamed of his name, and she hated the depth of that feeling in him.  
“Your brother too now.”, she whispered back and he pressed her harder still.  
“Sandor, it won't matter. One drop of blood did not poison your entire line, no matter what you believe.”  
His hand descended across her back. He measured his strength with caution not to crush her. Would that they could melt into one.  
“Did I ever tell you how I got my leg wound?”  
She shook her head. Arya did but he never had.  
“When I learned they had made you a Lannister. I drank fast and deep and I fought my brother's men just for my blade to cut something. You know why I did? I thought the worst had happened to you, that's why. And it gnawed at me. I thought of nothing else. Those men, that's what they think too when they remember your father and they’ve seen the bottom of their tankard. They remember Ned Stark and the girl Tywin Lannister tried to pass as Arya.”  
“Jeyne.”, she interrupted him. Jeyne that he had saved himself from the massacre of Ned Stark's men.   
He nodded gravely.  
“Jeyne. They remember nobody did a thing. Even those who were not there remember that. It's in the rocks of this place now.”  
“You think they are ashamed?”  
“I know they are. Doesn't matter to them what you want or what you chose. So hold on to that grudge, Sansa. They were calling you wanton and foolish when they saw us talk every night, now they say you're punished for it. That’s the same men, I promise you that. They'll say in the same breath that you're their sweet maiden to protect and that you brought this on yourself. They'll never be done telling you how wrong they think you are. Let them talk, since there's no way around it. But don't be so soft.”  
“I'm not soft, I'm angry.”, she protested. He chuckled, her northern accent always got thicker with anger.  
“Soft as when you fell out of your nest, little bird. You must be, for this to surprise you.” He sighed. “Or be soft for the two of us. It makes no matter, I won't let them get me. You'll have me there as long as you want it.”  
  
She rested in his arms, bone weary and relieved that her husband knew.  
  
“I trust you’d tell me if I make you unhappy.”, he offered, as he sometimes did.  
She pushed away from his chest slowly, her mouth closed in a tight line, hesitating.  
“Go on. Tell me.”, he grunted grimly after a long and hurt silence.  
“There's … There’s one thing.”  
“I told you you’d come to regret it.”, he snapped. Sansa knew he would never really stop worrying she would push him away someday and she had made peace with his fears. Even if he would never really do so himself.  
“You snore. So loudly, my lord.”, she said barely repressing her smile.  
He threw his head back and laughed a booming laugh that sent the last of the audience scurrying. Free from his old anger he looked ever so much younger. She clasped her hands behind his neck and he tugged on her collar with one finger, leaving a trail of kisses on her throat. The inner coils that kept him strong ran hot and she would stay locked around him until her death, if she could.  
  
If she could make others see this side of him, they would not think of killing him _for her own good_.  
They needed to know him, she thought. To see the good steel under the speckles of rust. And they needed to see that she was happy with this match, since they would not understand that she would not concern herself with their opinion any longer.  
  
She took him by the arm and lead him out of the training yard.  
“Come.”, she said, resting her head on his shoulder, “We have much to do, and I would rather enjoy you as much as I can.”   
“That we agree on.”, he whispered, and together they left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 3 scenes I wanted :
> 
> \- We want to kill your husband because we love you  
> \- You'll be my friend whether you want it or not  
> \- You know what? The easiest solution is for you to marry me. I don't make the rules. Well yes I do but hey 
> 
> I wanted something sweet but not too easily sweet. I love fanfictions about these two, I’ve read dozens, but I know that there would be so much to overcome for them to be together in canon, not too much, but a whole big much. And I don't expect the household to be overjoyed by the news. 
> 
> It was important to me to portrait Sandor as a fair (if grumpy) lord. He always strikes me as a someone who'd respect social contract between a ruler and his vassals. Changing places in the social order wouldn't upset his respect of it (you don't become this bitter without having first being an idealist). 
> 
> I imagined a Sansa that yet sad is also aware of her needs for moral balance (“at home with her pack”), I just couldn’t conceive of her having one mood, so it was important for me to show her as someone working on her own happiness. I thought it important too to let her have agency, to let her choose who she wants to share her life and bed with. I don't see her happy with a partner that was imposed on her, not again, not truly. 
> 
> I love that these two go way beyond what society taught them was the norm in a “relationship” between a high born lady and a guard. She listens to his advice and cares about his physical and mental well-being. He wants her to speak her mind and to have a choice in her own life. 
> 
> I know Sansa learning of what Littlefinger did to Jeyne is going to be probably going to be amongst the things that decides Sansa to “betray” him. It will probably happen later than the tourney but I like the idea of him dying in the Vale and I like the idea of his death to be public. 
> 
> This fanfiction is not “finished” per se, I just need to publish it because I always find something to add, something to change, and it’s preventing me from working on something else. What’s left are details I feel are missing. That being said, I’m extremely happy with how this turned out, it’s only 26k but I worked on this for over a year, english is not my mother tongue and I learned a ton of new words and a lot about storytelling. So enjoy!

**Author's Note:**

> This story has 4 parts


End file.
